The court found it legal to transfer personal data of civil activists on VKontakte to Center E

On December 12, the City Court of St. Petersburg upheld the decision of the Smolninsky District Court, which in April refused to satisfy the claim for the illegal transfer of personal data. This is reported by the publication “Idel. Realii" with reference to the lawyer Dmitry Gerasimov.

Earlier, the head of Navalny’s Kazan headquarters, Elvira Dmitrieva (died in October 2019), activists Andrei Boyarshinov and Alexei Boyarov, as well as the coordinator of Golos in Tatarstan, Mikhail Tikhonov, filed a lawsuit for compensation for disclosing personal data without their consent.

In January 2018, the administration of VKontakte, upon request from the Tatarstan branch of Center E, handed over user identifiers, first and last names, email addresses, mobile phone numbers, the date of registration on the social network and the IP addresses from which they accessed the network .

According to the law, law enforcement agencies may require the transfer of personal data in connection with criminal or administrative proceedings, inspections and other operational activities (clause 33, clause 1, article 13 N-3 of the Federal Law "On Police"). However, the employees of the Center "E" did not motivate their demand, which they also had to do.

The plaintiffs consider the transfer of their personal data a violation of the secrecy of communication. They stated that the request from the department “was directed to the illegal collection of characterizing information regarding the plaintiffs for the purpose of further use for the operational development of the TsPE of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Tajikistan.”