Without losing face

The Facebook leadership does not consider it necessary to place Russian users on servers in Russia. This was stated by the director of public policy of the company in Scandinavia, Central and Eastern Europe and Russia Thomas Mirub Kristensen at a meeting with the head of Roskomnadzor Alexander Zharov, Vedomosti reported .

According to the sources of the publication close to the RKN, Kristensen presented Zharov a tough position. Facebook does not consider information from the accounts of its users personal data. In addition, the company considers the transfer of data to Russia economically unprofitable.

The press secretary of Roskomnadzor Vadim Ampelonsky does not disclose the meeting. However, he claims that Kristensen did not declare the refusal to establish servers in Russia. Facebook refused to comment on the results of the meeting.

Russian data centers have repeatedly offered Facebook their services, but to no avail. This publication was announced by a person close to the owners of one of the largest data centers. Also, nothing is known about the implementation of the Facebook tenders for the construction or rental of the data processing center.

Moreover, data on Facebook and other social networks are organized by information categories, and not by regions, and are stored on different servers around the world. This technically does not allow localizing data on a geographical basis, experts surveyed by the publication noted.

On Tuesday, the press service of the RKN reportedJarova’s negotiations with Kristensen . "The meeting discussed a wide range of issues of interaction between the company with the supervisory authority in the framework of the fulfillment of the requirements of Russian legislation, including the 242nd Federal Law entering into force on September 1, 2015 (on the localization of bases with personal data of Russians on servers located in Russia)," the report said.

On July 16, Zharov said that the Russian authorities will not transfer the entry into force of the law on the localization of personal data on Russian servers. "There was a discussion that it is necessary to slow down the law of the law, make it sleeping for a year. In this story, it is definitely necessary to put an end to," Zharov said. According to him, the law will enter into force in the appointed time, but "no fail or collapse for the industry will happen."

Samsung, Lenovo, AliExpress, Ebay, PayPal, Uber, Booking.com and other players began transferring data to Russia, Zharov said. However, according to him, such large companies as Facebook, Google and Apple are not yet engaged in the location of these Russians. Nevertheless, meetings with their representatives are held in Roskomnadzor, and “they think how the law will follow,” said the head of Roskomnadzor.

Zharov emphasized that the Facebook and Google do not appear in the list of checks before the end of the year. “In principle, they can work until the time of planned verification comes, or, for some reason, a decision on an unscheduled audit will not be made,” he said. Twitter does not process personal data, according to Roskomnadzor.