Russia Threatens To Shut Down Facebook Over Local Data Storage Laws (bloomberg.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Facebook Inc. will be shut down in Russia next year if it fails to comply with requirements to store user data locally, according to the head of Russia's state communications watchdog. "The law is mandatory for everyone," Alexander Zharov told reporters Tuesday. Roskomnadzor will be forcing foreign internet companies to comply or shut down in the country. President Vladimir Putin signed a law in 2014 that requires global internet firms to store personal data of Russian clients on local servers. Companies ranging from Alphabet Inc.'s Google to Alibaba Group Holding Ltd complied, while others like Twitter Inc. demanded extra time to evaluate the economic feasibility of doing so.

Comments

Russia won't shut down FB

[Anonymous Coward]

They need FB for the mid terms, and certainly for the 2020 presidential election.

Re: Russia won't shut down FB

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but they don't need it in Russia for that.

Re:Russia won't shut down FB

[TheRaven64]

Also in the news this morning, Russia is considering banning Facebook during their next election cycle. I guess they know a little bit about how much influence Facebook can have on an election outcome...

Re:Russia won't shut down FB

[rtb61]

Ohh fuck off, with the Russia bullshit. Why is it really, really smart for the Russian government to ban Facebook because you fucking nut burgers, it means local Russian companies will be able to snag that market, money stays in the country rather than raising debt, any fucking excuse can do and it is the smart thing to do. Simply cripple foreign web companies with bans to promote local development and hugely reduce revenue drain especially when those companies cheat on taxes like no other.

It makes sound economic sense for all countries governments to interfere with the early start advantage of foreign companies, to promote local development. Those foreign companies are disruptive economic drain that bring very little to local economies, very few jobs, and are the biggest tax cheats, so bad across the board, they just syphon money out of the economy to of all places, no where else but tax havens across the planet.

It is sound economic practice to cripple foreign internet companies with all sorts of bans, it really is. So data must be stored locally, no data can be exported, all foreign advertisement must be locally regulated, local servers must serve local users, anything you can come up to disadvantage foreign internet companies with their tax haven shenanigans, it sound economic practice and suck it up people, it will happen more and more and people will accept it.

Re:Russia won't shut down FB

[stephanruby]

Please see the bad argument on page 33 "Guilt by Association" in https://bookofbadarguments.com...

In other words, we don't have to be followers of Hillary Satan herself, nor readers of the leftist New York Times, to believe that the Russians may have tried to meddle with last year's presidential elections. President Trump's own government almost admitted as much last Friday.

And if not Russia, someone did try to hack those elections in 20 states. And that's the important part, whoever it was, someone powerful seems to have launched a wide-scale assault on our democracy and on our country. And President Trump doesn't seem to be taking this assault on our country seriously at all.

Re: Russia won't shut down FB

[stephanruby]

Well, first off. President Donald Trump is our leader. He needs to tackle the attack head-on in a speech.

And no, he doesn't need to use the bully pulpit to defend himself or protect his fragile ego. As a country, we've been attacked and we're way past egos. And whatever he does, some haters are just going to hate. It's not his job to address that group. It's his job to address the rest of the American people.

Take the example of President George W Bush, he did many things wrong both before and after 9/11, but when 9/11 happened, at least he addressed the attack publicly and then launched a full investigation into what went wrong on our end. It didn't matter if the 9/11 commission would uncover things that were potentially embarrassing to him. This is just something that as a leader, he had to do. And no, national defense isn't just up to the individual States. Why are you suggesting a federal takeover of a state program? National defense is already a national responsibility. And for instance, the fact that our Federal government inspects our bridges and our most critical roads doesn't mean that the Federal government has taken over the role of building them or maintaining them itself.

Re: Russia won't shut down FB

[stephanruby]

I'm not making a moral argument. We've done much worse to some South American and Middle-Eastern countries ourselves.

My point is that, whether it's Mainland China trying to use a bunch of Buddhist monks to pass campaign contributions to the Bill Clinton campaign many years ago or whether it's a large foreign power that has the audacity to try to hack our elections, we need to strengthen our defenses and increase our safeguards if need be, and perhaps even retaliate if we deem the attacks serious enough.

After all, large foreign powers like China or Russia have quasi-unlimited budgets and battalions of hackers at their disposal. Our self-governance is at stake. If they tried it once without feeling our wrath, they're going to try it again.

It is only fair

[houghi]

If the NSA can read everything, why not the rest of the world.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

This is true. It is about censorship so they can root through it. Keep that in mind, every other country, when your laws demand the same thing.

Facebook non-compliant evil doer

[deathguppie]

This is the biggest problem that social media companies face. How to protect not only their business interests but also the people behind the data. At one level you are giving dissidents a platform to speak, but also a platform for raw propaganda. On the other hand you are storing a social map that will make rounding up and executing or imprisoning so much easier. I don't envy their position but a lot of people have pointed out that something should have been done about these issues years ago.

Isn't this the law of the land in many places?

[ctilsie242]

There are a lot of places that enacted laws that require data to be stored on local servers to that country. Russia, and the EU require this. China requires not just this, but 51% ownership of any venture on their soil.

What is surprising is that the US doesn't have these rules. Critical info on US citizens can be stored anywhere, even a hostile nation that would use that info for its economic or military gains.

Re:Isn't this the law of the land in many places?

[guruevi]

The US has certain protection laws, they don't specify specifically "where" it has to be hosted, but they do require US companies to cooperate with investigations and demands from the government *regardless* of "where" it is hosted.

The EU, well, that ended up being a law without any teeth to it. The EU can demand its information laws to extend to the US or other locations, but it knows damn well that it can't enforce those laws outside it's borders.

China and Russia are the only ones that are actually standing up to the corporations. China knows it has a market the corporations can't ignore, so it can demand pretty much anything and they make sure the corporation knows that playing in their market means they'll have to grin and bear while providing the lube.

Re:Isn't this the law of the land in many places?

[CaptainDork]

Agreed, and ...

"Once it's digitized, it's in the public domain." ~ © 2017 CaptainDork

It really doesn't matter where it's stored. We've seen that security is more porous than a neutrino passing through the universe.

Re:Isn't this the law of the land in many places?

[olau]

I talked to a lawyer about the data protection directives in EU not long ago, and according to her it's just a question of time.

The directive is actually clear - due to the whole NSA thing (gag orders and whatnot), US-based companies can't provide the necessary guarantees that personal data for EU citizens will be adequately protected.

Google has a form you can fill in that they claim is good enough. But according to her, it's pretty obvious it's not. People just pretend it is. They can keep pretending some time yet, but at some point a verdict is going land and set the precedent that it isn't.

Once that precedent is set, organizations in the EU will face a legal risk if they continue using the services. The new data protection directives to come into force next year has some relatively high fines associated.

I'm not an expert, but I'm of the impression that the EU directive is actually reasonable and acknowledges that law enforcement sometimes needs to access to information after having consulted a court - it's the situation with NSA and the almost total lack of control with that organization in the US that's the problem.

Do it!

[slashdot_commentator]

I hope Facebook responds by never accepting another Russian funded ad. Not just the Russian propaganda machine will be thwarted in the US, but also Europe, and any other place Facebook has a presence. The Russian audience, by contrast, is minuscule, and Russia is just a big gas station with outdated weapons for export.

About time!

[Gussington]

I never understood why this isn't already a thing. If a previous article is to be believed, Data is the new oil, so why would any sovereign nation just allow a foreign company come and drain all of your natural resources?

Yes; I raised issue in 2010 & proposed solutio

[Paul Fernhout]

http://web.archive.org/web/201...
"Now, there are many people out there (including computer scientists) who may raise legitimate concerns about privacy or other important issues in regards to any system that can support the intelligence community (as well as civilian needs). As I see it, there is a race going on. The race is between two trends. On the one hand, the internet can be used to profile and round up dissenters to the scarcity-based economic status quo (thus legitimate worries about privacy and something like TIA). On the other hand, the internet can be used to change the status quo in various ways (better designs, better science, stronger social networks advocating for some healthy mix of a basic income, a gift economy, democratic resource-based planning, improved local subsistence, etc., all supported by better structured arguments like with the Genoa II approach) to the point where there is abundance for all and rounding up dissenters to mainstream economics is a non-issue because material abundance is everywhere. So, as Bucky Fuller said, whether is will be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race to the very end. While I can't guarantee success at the second option of using the internet for abundance for all, I can guarantee that if we do nothing, the first option of using the internet to round up dissenters (or really, anybody who is different, like was done using IBM [tabulators] in WWII Germany) will probably prevail. So, I feel the global public really needs access to these sorts of sensemaking tools in an open source way, and the way to use them is not so much to "fight back" as to "transform and/or transcend the system". As Bucky Fuller said, you never change thing by fighting the old paradigm directly; you change things by inventing a new way that makes the old paradigm obsolete."