Cisco wants privacy to be a fundamental human right

The company that pioneered internetworking, Cisco, is now calling for fresh legislation to protect people around the world from the privacy-invading effects of the technology it helped to popularise.

Protecting people whose data is monetised and solving complex privacy of a world with tens of billions of internet-connected devices requires United States' legislative regimes to be interoperable with those of other nations, Cisco said.

This means US law needs to work with for instance the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Not being interoperable with privacy protection regimes in other nations will make it difficult for US companies to do business globally, Cisco believes.

On top of interoperability, Cisco is urging the US to avoid fracturing legal obligations for data privacy, and to adopt a uniform, federal law.

Customers should be resassured that their privacy rights can be enforced robustly without costly and unnecessary litigation, the company said.

Security and transparency around data and the collection of it, aloing with accountability will be some of the elements that Cisco will advocate for in privacy legislation.

“Cisco calls for comprehensive and interoperable privacy legislation around the world that allows ethical movement of data between countries.

Laws should be anchored to the core principles of security, transparency, fairness, and accountability, because privacy is a fundamental human right,” said Cisco chief executive Chuck Robbins in a statement.

Cisco's law-making proposal for privacy safeguards follows Microsoft which two years ago published a policy paper that called for a Digital Geneva Convention that sets out rules to protect the public from network-borne nation state threats.