It strikes me as unusual for Cisco to make social activist statements around privacy laws as a company (1). What would be Cisco’s motivation to call for social justice publicly.  Logically there must be reasons. 

To start, Cisco is calling on the U.S. government to develop a US federal privacy law that assures customers their data is protected. The American system should not just look to solve for today’s privacy discussions around monetization of customer data; it should aim to solve for the complex privacy needs of a world where tens of billions of devices are connected to the internet.

Its a great thing that Cisco is adding to the debate on privacy. The lack of direction from government and social forums is astonishing as tech companies eg. Facebook make huge profits by exploiting the lack of controls. 

As Cisco becomes a data company by operating cloud services and holding large amounts of personal and corporate data, its business has new risks to face. 

Woke marketingHaving your brand associated with social activism can be a winner. (2)Legal Clarity

Cisco has a number of products that collect large amounts of customer and corporate data. For example, Cloudcenter has complete visibility of customers business, Cisco’s WiFi Analytics are tracking people through retail spaces. Cisco licensing collects more than just asset data. Intersight has so much data it can make recommendations on configuration and operations. 

If the law is unclear, Cisco could face legal risks 

Law EnforcementsWe have examples of law enforcement using data from smart assistants, fitness monitor and watches. It seems likely that law enforcement will use data from cloud services when pursuing financial crimes. Divergent LawsToday, Europe is leading in privacy policy and US companies are generally not welcome to influence the process and profits might be reduced. Further, if privacy laws vary widely between countries then it may become difficult and expensive to maintain compliance.ChinaLots of noise about Chinese companies and industrial espionage. Privacy laws could be useful for better protections and prosecutions

I would note that most of these reasons would apply to many US companies operating globally. 

The EtherealMind View

Making a public statement calling for privacy is nice. Free, ineffective and makes good marketing. What we should be looking is genuine action to demonstrate commitment. 

Resources and Notes

Cisco Calls for Privacy to be Considered a Human Right | The Network : https://newsroom.cisco.com/press-release-content?type=webcontent&articleId=1965781

* I recognise that John Chambers did some community stuff to reduce boredom but it wasn’t aligned with Cisco.* When Nike make the ad with a controversial sports person (Kapernick) they appealed to their customers.