SECURITY: Russia is getting tough on US online companies which by not storing data on Russians in the country are not complying with the same laws as local media companies, including local search engine Yandex and social network VKontakte, are subject to. Roskomnadzor, the Russian telecommunications regulator has advised Google, Facebook and Twitter that they must register as ‘organisers of information.’ Read more on GigaOM
Back in July, Vladimir Putin signed a law requiring all web services handling Russians’ personal data to store that information in local data centers.
It was always obvious that this would be a problem for the likes of Google, Facebook and Twitter, which do not use Russian data centers – and so, it has come to pass.
On Friday, Izvestia reported that Russian telecommunications regulator Roskomnadzor has sent the three companies notification that they must register as “organizers of information”, alongside local players like VKontakte, Mail.ru and Yandex. This means they must store Russians’ data locally, including metadata about Russian users’ communications.
NB: Magnifying glass image via Shutterstock.
