Rejecting an appeal from the US company, a Moscow municipal court confirmed today an earlier court decision to consider LinkedIn as violating the Russian legislation on personal data storage. The news has just been reported by the Russian news agency Interfax.
As a consequence, the telecom regulator Roskomnadzor — which had initiated the legal procedure against LinkedIn — will require operators to block access to the US site from Russia. This may happen as early as next week, according to Roskomnadzor’s spokesman Vadim Ampelovsky.
Russia’s new legislation on personal data, which came into force in September 2015, requires to store Russian citizens’ personal data only in servers located on Russia territory (see white paper by EWDN and EY).
Many Russian and foreign organizations — including Alibaba, Apple, Booking.com and Google — have already transfered user data from foreign data centers to Russia, or announced ongoing projects to do so, while others have not complied so far.
Virtual space or Russian territory?
This is the case of LinkedIn, which launched a Russian version of its platform five years ago. Earlier this year, the company had not provided any “substantial answer” to two inquiries from Roskomnadzor, according to this organization.
In addition, Roskomnadzor pointed out the “big disorders with leaks of personal data from LinkedIn since 2010,” as stated by Ampelovsky last month.
In statments made at the court hearing, the LinkedIn defendant argued that the Russian legislation does not apply to LinkedIn users, “who are factually located in the [virtual space] outside the Russian Federation, and provide their personal data there.”
As reported by TV Rain, the defendant denied that LinkedIn violates Russian users’ rights in any way, since these users voluntarily accept the site’s terms of use.
These arguments proved insufficient to convince the Moscow court.
