LinkedIn Corp. and the Russian authorities have failed to reach an agreement to restore access to the international social network from this country, Reuters has reported, refering to statements made yesterday by the company and the telecom regulator Roskomnadzor.
“While we believe we comply with all applicable laws, and despite conversations with Roskomnadzor, including meeting with them in Moscow in December 2016, we have been unable to reach an understanding that would see them lift the block on LinkedIn in the Russian Federation,” Reuters quoted a LinkedIn spokesman as saying.
The US company, which is now owned by Microsoft, said that it would still offer a Russian-language version of its platform and that it hoped that access to it from Russia will be restored in the future.
Roskomnadzor presented the matter in a slightly different light: “[We] received a letter from LinkedIn’s VP Global Public Policy Pablo Chavez [stating that] the company is not ready to remove infringements of Russian law. The company has refused to comply with the obligation of storing personal data of Russian citizens on Russian territory, confirming its lack of interest in working on the Russian market.”
Leaks of personal data
Russia’s 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).
Based on these rules and following two court decisions, the regulator blocked access to LinkedIn last November. Roskomnadzor also pointed out the “big disorders with leaks of personal data from LinkedIn since 2010.”
Many Russian and foreign organizations — including Alibaba, Apple, Booking.com, eBay, Google and Uber — 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.
In statements made at a court hearing last year, 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 Russian court. The site, which launched its Russian-language version in 2011, had more than 5 million users from Russia as of late 2016.
