Yesterday a Russian court fined Twitter and Facebook 4 million rubles ($62,845) each for their failure to comply with Russia’s personal data storage law.
According to the Russian media, the court session was attended neither by the representatives of the two companies nor by those of Roskomadzor, the Internet and telecom regulator, which filed the complaint earlier this month.
According to a legislation applicable since September 2015, companies operating in Russia are required to store Russian users’ or clients’ personal data on servers physically located in the country. Numerous foreign and domestic players were concerned, including global players who tended to store their users’ data in borderless clouds (see white paper by EWDN and EY).
Under a new law imposing stiffer fines that President Vladimir Putin signed in December 2019, fines for repeat offenses go up to 18 million rubles (almost $290,000).
The authorities may even block access to their sites from Russia – as was the case with LinkedIn in 2016, following two court decisions.
Over the past years Roskomnadzor requested Facebook and Twitter several times to report on their compliance with the law. The digital giants sent both positive and negative signals on the matter, but have failed to provide Roskomnadzor with specific answers. In Spring last year Roskomnadzor issued a Jan. 31, 2020 deadline.
A range of other international businesses — including Alibaba, AliExpress, Apple, and Google — have been more law-abiding, managing to transfer user data from foreign data centers to Russia.
