From: FierceGovernmentIT

By Greg Slabodkin

The European Parliament adopted Dec. 11 a first-ever Digital Freedom Strategy  to guide European Union foreign policy. As the world’s largest  trading block, the parliament says it’s now put digital freedom on the EU  political agenda and that it intends to leverage economic power to promote and  protect uncensored access to the web globally.

Among other measures, the strategy  (.pdf) calls on the EU to codify the principle of net neutrality and provide  political support to European companies forced by third country governments to  take down online content. The makes the EU’s trade and association agreements,  development programs and accession negotiations conditional on respect for  digital freedoms.

It calls for the EU to halt the export of technologies used by authoritarian  regimes to track and trace human rights activists, journalists and  dissidents.

The strategy also states that collected digital evidence (smartphone pictures  and clips of human rights violations) should be admissible in court  proceedings.

Digital freedoms “are fundamental rights which deserve equal protection as  traditional human rights,” said Marietje Schaake, a Dutch member of the European  Parliament who acted as rapporteur (key sponsor) for adoption of the strategy,  in a statement  on her website.

For more: – download  the digital freedom strategy (.pdf) – read  further about the strategy on Schaake’s website