Russia opens civil cases against Facebook and Twitter over local data laws

On Monday, Russian’s popular watchdog, Roskomnadzor said that it opened a civil case against Twitter and Facebook for failing to explain how they plan to comply with local data laws, the Interfax news agency reported.

According to Interfax, Facebook and Twitter “have not submitted specific plans and deadlines for the localization of databases of Russian users in the Russian Federation.”

Alexander Zharov, Roskomnadzor’s head of the department, said, “companies have a month, after which the regulator will proceed to concrete actions in their attitude.”

Roskomnadzor reported that it received responses from Facebook and Twitter to a request for providing information on the localization of Russian data in the territory of the Russian Federation and analyzes them.

“Russia has introduced tougher internet laws in the last five years, requiring search engines to delete some search results, messaging services to share encryption keys with security services and social networks to store Russian users’ personal data on servers within the country”, the Reuters reported.

On December 17, last year, the ministry sent letters to Twitter and Facebook about the need to comply with legislation on the localization of data storage for Russian users in the Russian Federation.

If companies refuse to demand or ignore it, they will be fined 5,000 rubles each, and then they will again be given a period of six months to a year to localize the data, said department head Alexander Zharov.

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