Digital agenda

The European Union hosted its first Digital Agenda Assembly last week in Brussels. Many European politicians, advisors, entrepreneurs, journalists and others gathered together to tackle a wide range of topics, including the impact of social networking and various new open data projects. The EU has a number of politicians working on tech issues, ranging from the Commissioner for the Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes to other members of the European Parliament.

Deutsche Welle sat down with Marietje Schaake, a Dutch member of the European Parliament, and one of the EU's leaders on technology policy.

Deutsche Welle: In terms of European policy that you're involved with, how do Iran, technology and the digital agenda overlap?

Marietje Schaake: They overlap in many ways. On the one hand we see that European companies do provide precisely the tools that are used by Iranian regime officials - but also other places in the world - to oppress people. I think that that's unnecessary and should be investigated much more.

There should be more transparency there, and as policymakers we should be able to make decisions in favor of human rights, which are universal. Human rights polices are a prime responsibility of the EU. Sometimes European companies play a role they shouldn't and when it comes to Iran, we must put the human rights question higher on the political agenda. It's often overshadowed by the nuclear issue.

We must also make sure that people have access to those tools that can help them acquire more freedom and guarantee their rights. Sometimes precisely those [information and communications technologies] tools are banned under broad economic sanctions, and so we must be much more targeted in our approach to that country which, in principle, has tremendous opportunity and a very promising population that suffers under the hands of a few people in power.

Nokia Siemens was known for having sold a comprehensive telecom package to the Iranian government some years ago, and was likely responsible for the Iranian government's ability to surveil Iranian mobile phone networks and Internet access.

Of course, Nokia Siemens played a significant role in Iran, and they've been called out on that, and they've engaged in that discussion. But I'm also worried about the companies about whom we hardly know anything. There are a number of so-called cybersecurity companies that are providing technologies, and they refuse to disclose what kind of tools they are selling to whom because it's part of the package that this is supposed to be all secret. There are a number of companies who are providing these technologies too, which we as policymakers and lawmakers don't have enough of a grip on, and don't have enough of an insight into.

It's kind of a cat-and-mouse game where businesses seem to be choosing the need to make money over human rights and fundamental freedoms, and I'm disappointed in that and I think we have to take our responsibilities for the guarantee of human rights.

Last week marked the two-year anniversary of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election. What has changed in the last two years with respect to European law and keeping a closer eye on European companies that are selling to Iran and other authoritarian countries?

A lot has happened in Europe. I'm always a bit modest, so I don't want to talk about landslide changes, but there have been adoptions of a number of sets of regulations when it comes to dual-use technologies, which are technologies that can be used in several ways, but the assessment of those, and more generally, human rights impact assessments before trade agreements have been put into place, and I think that's very important.

It's been reported that the United States is working on an "Internet-in-a-suitcase" project, with some links to Austria. Is Europe doing anything similar in terms of covert or overt projects to bring technologies that would be beneficial to activists?

Europe should be the leader on Internet freedom because we have much more credibility, I would say, to be the force and the leader when it comes to Internet freedom. I'm working very hard to bring the EU there. Unfortunately, it's not acting as a leader, and it has far less budget priorities and policy priorities when it comes to that.

Interview: Cyrus Farivar

Editor: Sean Sinico