Russia’s communication watchdog announced that it will soon open an administrative proceeding against Twitter and Facebook since the two tech giants have failed to explain how they will plan and comply with local data laws, which was reported by the Interfax news agency.
Roskomnadzor, the watchdog, has been quoted as saying- “Twitter and Facebook didn’t explain how and when they will be complying with the legislation which requires all the servers that are used to store Russians’ personal data to be located in Russia only.“
The head of the agency, Alexander Zharov, said- “The companies have a month’s time to provide information regarding their services, otherwise strict action will be taken against them.“
Russia recently introduced tougher Internet laws in the past five years, and this includes the need of search engines having to delete some search results, messaging services having to share encryption keys with security services and social networks having to store Russian users’ personal data on local servers, i.e within their country.
Currently, the only tools which Russia plans to enforce on their data rules include fines which would typically add to a few thousand dollars or it would block the offending online services, and this is one of the options which have the technical difficulties.
But sources in November told Reuters that Moscow has plans of imposing much severe and stiffer fines on technology firms which don’t comply with the Russian laws.
