Moscow court fines Twitter for refusing to provide information about Russian users
On Friday, April 5, the Moscow Magistrates’ Court examined administrative offense complain made by the Russian Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media or Roskomnadzor against Twitter for failing to confirm information if Russian users’ personal data is stored in the territory of the Russian Federation. During the third hearing of the case, Judge Anton Kozyrev ordered Twitter to pay a fine of 3,000 rubles ($4.60 USD), DW reported.
In court, Twitter was represented by lawyers Maria Mikhenkova and Vladislav Arkhipov, and Roskomandzor was represented by Mikhail Vorobyev, who compiled the claim. He said that Roskomandzor had been in contact with Twitter to determine whether the personal data of the Russian Twitter users is stored directly in Russia. Roskomandzor had sent one of the letters personally to Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter. As evidence, Roskomandzor requested a diagram of the datacenter where data is stored, as well as a copy of the lease agreement. Nevertheless, Twitter did not send anything in response, Vorobyev assured at the hearing.
According to the lawyers of the social network, Russian law does not give Roskomandzor the right to demand these documents from Twitter. In addition, a user is not required to provide their real name when creating an account on Twitter. Twitter users can use nicknames. Arkhipov cited, as an the example, the campaign organized by James Joyce’s fans, who created 54 Twitter accounts for fictional characters. Therefore, the information that the users provides when opening an account is not necessarily personal data, Arkhipov said.
After hearing the views of the parties, the magistrate recognized the claims of Roskomandzor as justified and fined Twitter 3,000 rubles. On April 12, the Moscow Magistrates’ Court will examine a similar claim of Roskomandzor against Facebook.