Facebook: We do not provide data to special services

Facebook did not provide personal data from users either to American or any other special services. This was stated by Ruslan Gattarov after a meeting with the director of Facebook for communications with state authorities Thomas Kristensen, RIA Novosti reports. The meeting was held closed.

“They gave a unequivocal answer: no,” said Gattarov. “We proceed from we heard today. In order not to trust them, we have no reason and evidence of the opposite.”

Gattarov heads the Provisional Commission of the Council of the Federation Development of the Information Society. According to him, the meeting discussed the issue of a possible change in the Facebook user agreement. Kristensen promised to conduct consultations on this issue in his head office and inform the Council of Council about the results of consultations, Gattarov said.

Gattarov’s claims to Facebook are that in some cases the company can send the user a simple warning that his personal data will be transferred to third parties. In this case, the user does not have the opportunity to refuse. "Facebook assured us that this is done only in the case of the creation of new user services, or when transmitting data to the subopraper. However, based on the spirit of this agreement, it turns out that personal data can still be transmitted to third parties," Gattarov said.

On July 31, Gattarov said that the policy of using Facebook data does not comply with the norms of the European Convention on the Protection of Individuals and the Russian Law "On Personal Data". In this regard, he sent an appeal addressed to the prosecutor general Yuri Chaika and the head of the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications and Information Technologies and Mass Communications of Alexander Zharov.

“We have identified significant violations of the current Russian and international legislation. In particular, Facebook does not have an official representative office in our country and is managed by the Facebook Inc., which is registered in the United States, is a fundamentally significant moment that Facebook felted does not comply with the European Convention, which is ratified by Russia,” Gattarov said. In particular, he noted, as part of a policy of using Facebook data, the purpose of collecting user data is clearly not defined, which requires article 5 of the Convention.

On July 17, Gattarov said that the commission he head intends to check the user agreements Facebook, Twitter, Google and Yahoo! for violations of Russian legislation on the protection of personal data. “This is not a war against a particular company, but systematic work to bring the work of large Internet companies with personal data of citizens to international and Russian law,” Gattarov emphasized.

On June 15, the Facebook administration reported that for the second half of 2012 it received about 9-10 thousand requests from the US intelligence services regarding the personal data of its users concerning 18-19 thousand accounts-an average of one and a half thousand requests per month. According to the director of the legal department of the social network Ted Ulota, the requests concerned both terrorist threats that are wanted by criminals and missing children and minor offenses. He did not bring specific data about the extent to which the social network performed the requests of the special services, but wrote that it "aggressively" protects personal information about 200 million of its users.

Earlier, Facebook and several more companies turned to the US government with a request to allow them to publish data on the disclosure of user information after the revelations of Edward Snowden. He told the press that American intelligence services have direct access to the servers of the largest Internet companies and accounts of their users. Among the companies were called, including Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Apple and Microsoft.