Russia Tries To Force Facebook, Twitter To Relocate Servers To Russia

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Russian government agency responsible for censorship on the Internet has accused Facebook and Twitter of failing to comply with a law requiring all servers that store personal data to be located in Russia. Roskomnadzor, the Russian censorship agency, 'said the social-media networks hadn't submitted any formal and specific plans or submitted an acceptable explanation of when they would meet the country's requirements that all servers used to store Russians' personal data be located in Russia,' The Wall Street Journal reported today. Roskomnadzor said it sent letters to Facebook and Twitter on December 17, giving them 30 days to provide 'a legally valid response.' With the 30 days having passed, the agency said that 'Today, Roskomnadzor begins administrative proceedings against both companies.' The law went into effect in September 2015, but Russia has had trouble enforcing it. 'At the moment, the only tools Russia has to enforce its data rules are fines that typically only come to a few thousand dollars or blocking the offending online services, which is an option fraught with technical difficulties,' a Reuters article said today. According to The Journal, 'Facebook and Twitter could be fined for not providing information to the watchdog.'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.