Salesforce co-CEO Keith Block has come out in favor of a national privacy law, according to CNBC.
Privacy is becoming one of the biggest battlegrounds for companies, governments and individuals alike. The U.S., however, does not have a comprehensive privacy law to outline what companies can and cannot do with individual data, or what rights individuals have to protect their privacy.
In contrast, the European Union’s (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) went into effect in 2018 and provides comprehensive privacy protections and gives consumers rights over their own data. Similarly, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) went into effect January 1, and provides similar protections. Although companies, such as Microsoft and Mozilla, have expanded GDPR and CCPA protections to all of their customers, there are far more companies that have not, and have no intention of doing so.
At a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum (WEF), Keith Block said the U.S. needs its own version of the GDPR.
“You have to applaud, for example, the European Union for coming up with GDPR and hopefully there will be a GDPR 2.0,” said Block.
“There is no question there needs to be some sort of regulation in the United States. It would be terrific if we had a national data privacy law; instead we have privacy by zipcode, which is not a good outcome,” he said.
As the issue continues to impact individuals and organizations, it will be interesting to see if the U.S. follow’s the EU’s lead.