MOSCOW – Facebook needs to comply with Russia’s personal data localization law in 2018, or it will stop working in Russia, Alexander Zharov, the head of the Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technology, and Mass Communications (Roskomnadzor), said on Sept. 26.
“The law is mandatory for everyone. In any case, we will make sure the law is carried out, or else the company will stop working in Russia, as regretfully happened to Linkedin. No exceptions will be made,” Zharov said in response to a question from an Interfax correspondent as to when Facebook must comply with the law.
“We will insist on Facebook’s compliance with Law No. 242. That will happen for sure in 2018,” Zharov said.
There is a deadline for solving the problem, and it will be met, Zharov said.
“We are well aware that Facebook has a significant number of users in Russia; we also understand that this service is not one of a kind, and there are other social networks available,” he said.
Facebook is pondering ways to implement the law; it has not sent any official letters yet, Zharov said.”We are not planning any inspections of Facebook before the end of 2017, but we may inspect it in 2018,” he said.
Twitter has pledged to localize personal data by the middle of 2018, Zharov said.
“We believe in goodwill, and we will not be inspecting that company, which has sent us a formal letter, until then. After that, the inspection will be imminent,” he said.
