In Russia, they want to increase fines for Internet companies for repeated violations of the law. For example, for refusing to remove links to blocked sites from the search engine, transfer encryption keys to the FSB, or for storing personal data of Russians outside the country.
New amendments to the Code of Administrative Offences, which the Presidential Administration and Roskomnadzor are currently working on, will impose a fine of 1% of their annual revenue in Russia for repeated violations. In case of subsequent violations, the company may be fined several more times or blocked.
For comparison: according to the current version of the law, Google’s fine for having links to banned sites in the search engine is 700 thousand rubles. But because of the new amendments, the company faces a fine of 450.2 million rubles – 1% of the 45.2 billion earned by Google last year in Russia.
In addition, even if the offending company has zero revenue in the Russian Federation, it will still give at least 1.5 million rubles (this is the minimum threshold).
Reuters sources from among Russian and foreign Internet companies confirmed to the publication that the draft amendments exist and the authorities have already sent it to them for evaluation.
If it is adopted, Google, Telegram, Facebook and other Internet companies, to which Roskomnadzor has claims regarding non-compliance with the legislation, will come under attack. For example, Facebook may be fined for refusing to transfer servers with Russian data to the territory of the Russian Federation. Problems may also arise for services to bypass the blocking of Roskomnadzor.
The list of companies affected by future amendments also includes online cinemas, social networks, mobile operators, online markets and other companies that work with personal data of Russians. However, one of the Reuters sources doubts that calculating the amount of the fine for any of the violators will be a simple task. After all, for the most part only the companies themselves know exactly how much they earn in the Russian Federation.
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