Russian tech giant fined for refusing to grant FSB round-the-clock access to its smart home system

In the first known case of its kind, a Moscow court has fined Russian tech giant Yandex 10,000 rubles (€107) for refusing to provide the Federal Security Service (FSB) with round-the-clock remote access to information on its smart home system, Alice, independent media outlet Agentstvo reported on Thursday.

Released in 2017, Alice, a voice assistant that performs common tasks such as providing weather forecasts and conducting internet searches, had amassed over 64 million users by October 2024, according to figures provided by Yandex.

The charges of non-compliance with an FSB date from 28 May, Agentstvo reported. Although the court had made its ruling on 10 June, it has only come to light in recent days.

Sources told state-affiliated business daily Vedomosti that Yandex had already repeatedly refused to provide information to the FSB, which they said was partly due to the small fines issued when viewed against the cost of the equipment that would be necessary to comply with FSB demands.

Independent news outlet Mediazona said that the presiding Judge Pozhilovsky had previously fined Yandex for refusing to provide the FSB with access to information stored on other Yandex services, each time fining them 10,000 rubles.

Yevgeny Smirnov from human rights NGO First Department told Agentstvo that the security forces trying to gain access to information from Alice was a new phenomenon. If the FSB were to be granted access, it would likely use all the capabilities of the system and try to gain access to users’ other electronic devices, Smirnov suggested.

As sources told Vedomosti, the case shows that whereas the relevant law had been thought to apply more to messenger services, the FSB is in fact now effectively within its rights to demand access to data from virtually any IT source.