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Russia Requires Apple and Google to Remove LinkedIn from Local App Stores

100 points by reimertz 10y ago

hubert123 10y ago
> comes weeks after a court blocked the professional networking service for flouting local laws > The action is the equivalent of a nation banning “Catcher in The Rye” yeah no, i dont think so
bostand 10y ago
Is linkedin being singled out or is this start of something bigger?
- nobodyshere 10y ago
  Nothing unexpected is happening. They have a law that requires storing Russian nationals' data on servers physically located in Russia. Linkedin refused to follow the law and got what was coming. While the law isn't that great, it is still there to be complied with.
  - zzzcpan 10y ago
    Except that almost nobody complies with that law. This is more like making an example out of a linkedin and attempting to gain power over internet companies, they have been doing this for a few years already.
    - nobodyshere 10y ago
      Well, it all doesn't work like that. "Hey guys, nobody follows this law, so neither should we!" - Nope.
      - JumpCrisscross 10y ago
        > it...doesn't work like that That's exactly how it works in Russia.
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
        nobodyshere 10y ago
        Kind of. Except for when you get noticed or become too big to skip.
      - matt4077 10y ago
        It can (and should) actually work like that. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yick_Wo_v._Hopkins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yick_Wo_v._Hopkins ("Racially discriminatory application of a racially neutral statute violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.")
    - bootloop 10y ago
      I think it's more of an internet company trying to run a business in a country without respecting the law which applies to you if you do business there. This is in fact the case for many countries beside Russia and there is no valid reason for another country to allow a company, which is running operations from a country known to not respecting a persons privacy regardless of its citizenship, to run a business in your country without been able to protect your citizens.
      - jjawssd 10y ago
        Didn't you know that Silicon Valley has the moral high ground? Duh. Americans can do no wrong /s
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - sberder 10y ago
    This is exactly the same in China, coupled with the ICP license that makes for total control of what is accessible in the territory.
    - xyzzy_plugh 10y ago
      My understanding is that China requires that data for Chinese citizens is only stored in China (you can maybe export aggregate, anonymous data). Russia on the other hand requires that data for Russian citizens be stored in Russia. I don't believe they prevent export. I've heard of large companies complying by simply uploading a tarball to a Russian server periodically.
      - nobodyshere 10y ago
        So does South Korea. At least based on my experience in gaming industry. They also required encrypting all private data.
    - dilemma 10y ago
      And Europe. I guess they're all commies.
      - Semaphor 10y ago
        Our new data protection laws won't kick in till 2018. I expect the NYT will then write a large article about how undemocratic the EU is after companies get fined for disobeying (this is assuming they don't manage to work around it with a new privacy shield that somehow makes it okay to store the data on US servers and rendering the whole protection meaningless).
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - edblarney 10y ago
    "Linkedin refused to follow the law and got what was coming. " Then why does the law only apply to LinkedIn as opposed to the other 100K apps and services that store data in the US as opposed to Russia? I don't doubt the impetus of this law in a certain light, at the same time, there's some political games being played I think.
    - andreyz4k 10y ago
      There is a famous saying "Strict laws in Russia are compensated by optionality of their application".
    - dntlkatmyname 10y ago
      Nobody really knows. Presumably they just wanted to test it out on some big enough company (even though LinkedIn is anything but big in Russia). What's more weird is that LinkedIn just outright refused to comply, when all they had to do was issue an announcement and maybe rent some servers in Russia (don't even have to use them).
fwn 10y ago
Nope, Putin, that won't make the LinkedIn requests stop. Fun aside I can understand that authorities would try new approaches on smaller players first. The quality of the administrative insight isn't necessarily tied to the scale of the targeted platform.
logicallee 10y ago
I don't get it. I clicked through the article to see the "justification" since LinkedIn is extremely tame. For example, imagine if LinkedIn were banned from the United States - why would that happen? Well it could happen if a court ordered it to stop impersonating its users, it didn't stop and kept impersonating then, and then the court ordered it to be shut down as punishment. Kind of far-fetched, but not that far-fetched. Everyone knows LinkedIn illegally impersonated its users. So I was wondering what the justification would be here. So I clicked through. I didn't see the full article, but this is what I found "a court blocked the professional networking service for flouting local laws that require internet firms to store data on Russian citizens within the nation’s borders." So question: why didn't it store data on its citizens within the nation's borders? It doesn't seem that far-fetched of a requirement to me. Doesn't Germany have the same requirement? I didn't Google in-depth but found this language (about Germany) "20. What rules regulate the transfer of data outside your jurisdiction? The Federal Data Protection Act (BDSG) differentiates between transfer of personal data within the EU/EEA and outside the EU/EEA."[1] Isn't this more or less the same thing? While I'm not defending Russia's actions (according to a Reddit user journalists are jailed, Putin's opposition opponent is in a Russian graveyard with 5 bullets in him, etc etc), but this seems like something that Linkedin could have complied on? Or is there more to the story? [1] http://uk.practicallaw.com/3-502-4080 http://uk.practicallaw.com/3-502-4080
- pizzapill 10y ago
  I'm from Germany I can see Linked In in the appstore. Since 2000 there are Safe Harbor laws in place that regulate how data can be stored in the US etc. altough their privacy standards don't match EU and especially German standards. My government was thinking about changing those contracts during the NSA scandals but AFAIK we're stuck in negotiations atm. By the way those negotiations are a farce since our intelligence services will hand the data right over to the NSA anyways.
  - robin_reala 10y ago
    To be pedantic, Safe Harbour died in 2015. The replacement is the EU-US Privacy Shield: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU-US_Privacy_Shield https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU-US_Privacy_Shield
fauigerzigerk 10y ago
This is a pretty confused and not very informative article. There isn't the slightest attempt to find out what the purpose of those "local laws" is. Censorship, consumer protection, privacy, anti-trust, protectionism, tax avoidance, law enforcement, it's all basically summed up as "Foreign governments causing trouble to US companies" That's pointless because it doesn't help putting pressure on the right party in the right conflict for the right reason.
- edblarney 10y ago
  It's a mixed bag. There are very real pragmatic reasons for Russians wanting to have their data stored locally. At the same time, theses laws can be applied very unevenly, and can often become means to play geopolitical games. This 'ban' may be on some level part of the constant diplomatic tit-for-tat that China/US/Russia play against one another. I mean - think of the other 100's of thousands of apps that store Russian's users data in the US, as opposed to Russia ... So messy :)
- yaakov34 10y ago
  These laws join other laws, the so-called anti-terrorist package from August 2014, which require service providers (defined very broadly to include such things as social networks and ISPs) to provide user data to the authorities upon request. If the server is physically in Russia and controlled by some Russian subsidiary, it is much harder for a company to evade such an order. Few people even bother to pretend that this is about anything other than closer control of Russian internet users by the Russian authorities. There is a weak spin about protecting the data of Russian users from foreign governments by placing it within Russia, which makes zero sense, since nothing prevents an American company from giving user data from its Russian server to the American government. And before someone says that the US does the same thing, note that something like 1000 people have already been imprisoned in the Russian Federation over various online comments and posts, and even Facebook likes. The fact that the US violates privacy also doesn't mean that it's all the same thing.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
rubiquity 10y ago
Putin must be tired of receiving friend requests from Polar Bears and other various Arctic recruiters.
- bhouston 10y ago
  Sergey Brin wanted me to be his 150th linkedin contact just yesterday. I must be important.
andreyz4k 10y ago
I'm from Russia, so I guess I could add some context here. A while ago our parliament created a pack of laws to "protect personal data of russian citizens". One of them ordered internet services to store all of the user data of russian citizens on servers, that are physically located in Russia. This law is in power since the beginning of 2016, but many big sites like LinkedIn and Facebook just ignored it. State authorities did nothing about it, but finally, in November they blocked LinkedIn in Russia, so now we ought to use some VPN or proxy to access it. And now they want to remove their apps from stores, despite they don't work without proxy as well.
- akjainaj 10y ago
  This is reasonable and, as far as I remember, the EU required the same as well.
  - cpncrunch 10y ago
    Not quite. They just require that you adequately protect PII. Since that is very expensive to do, only large companies tend to do it. Smaller companies probably just ignore it... https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2015/10/european-data-on-usa-servers-safe-harbor/ https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2015/10/european-data-on-usa-...
  - qaq 10y ago
    You have to account for market size the EU economy is huge Russian economy is about the size of large US city.
    - radiorental 10y ago
      This is more about sovereignty than GDP
      - chatmasta 10y ago
        Higher GDP allows an economic region to make more demands surrounding their sovereignty.
whack 10y ago
"The demand by Russian authorities to remove LinkedIn in Apple and Google app stores comes weeks after a court blocked the professional networking service for flouting local laws that require internet firms to store data on Russian citizens within the nation’s borders." Given NSA's monitoring activities, this is a surprisingly reasonable law. Maybe not a great one, but certainly reasonable. I wonder if the NSA activities will prove to be a watershed that kick off a tide of tech-nativism.
- andreyz4k 10y ago
  Given what I've heard about NSA, they are far more reasonable than our FSB (successor of KGB if anyone doesn't know). Our guys can easily use their right to "take for investigation" some servers just to protect a business of some of their colonels or friend of a colonel. And that makes storing a data in Russia a bit of a lottery.
  - devoply 10y ago
    That's the thing. In the modern secular state you need a Constitution which is essentially a covenant between man and his government, that the government is actually representing will of the people. Without that sort of secular, yet holy, document and corruption you get this sort of cronyism in which a normal honest man does not have rights or the same rights as corrupt people with connections do. This then makes everything more difficult and unpredictable. The Russians and the Soviets before them have never figured this out. We still have problems when this sort of behavior seeps into our system, but we have pretty good ways of controlling this behavior, and a general revulsion of the public against it, helps keep it under control.
    - disordinary 10y ago
      New Zealand is rated as the second least corrupt country in the world and ranked fourth on the democracy index, yet it has no constitution.
      - 10y ago
raz32dust 10y ago
I guess LinkedIn itself is just being used as an example. It is a smaller fish compared to Facebook or Google, and the Russian citizens are not as dependent on it, so it is a good choice to set an example. Why everyone wants to have local data is more interesting. I can think of some points: - The US wields a lot of soft power by virtue of the fact that a lot of user data about members in other countries lives here. - Other countries want the ability to block access to particular sites and the user data at will without having to go through US law. - Hampering growth of US companies helps local copycat companies grow. - Requiring local servers, local office, make in X etc. promotes local economic activity. There is a critical mass of people who need to be using these services for these points to be viable. China clearly has more than the critical mass, so they easily get away with this sort of behavior and it does them more good than harm (I think). EU probably has it. Russia alone probably does not.
- pdpi 10y ago
  Data jurisdiction is by itself an enormous and nuanced topic. There's a very interesting case to be made about giving your users a choice, as both having data in your own country or some foreign sovereignty come with different trade offs.
- nradov 10y ago
  Ultimately user data locality issues are going to have to be settled in trade treaties.
- _andromeda_ 10y ago
  >It is a smaller fish compared to Facebook or Google, and the Russian citizens are not as dependent on it, so it is a good choice to set an example. Not necessarily accurate. LinkedIn is a Microsoft company and I wouldn't exactly call them a small fish. This might just be the first of many protectionist measures Russia will be adopting.
delegate 10y ago
This is not just a rogue request from some crazy official, but part of a larger plan to subdue and scare off foreign tech companies and replace them with 'local' tech, controlled by the state. These people are not playing games - this is ideological warfare in action. Tech companies should get political - that means get ready to temporarily loose certain markets in exchange for defending some core principles. They might refuse to accept it, but tech companies are currently the most powerful (dormant) political players in the world - this is why Putin et al want to either control or eliminate them. They should ignore the request, then be ready to close their offices and offer to relocate all employees to a foreign country. No Google, AppStore and Google Play means back to the 90s.
- moolcool 10y ago
  >This is not just a rogue request from some crazy official, but part of a larger plan to subdue and scare off foreign tech companies and replace them with 'local' tech, controlled by the state. Do you think EU's heavy handed regulation on web services is similar? I think you could make the case that it's also a form of protectionism.
  - k-mcgrady 10y ago
    >> "heavy handed regulation on web services" Any you could point to? The only stuff I know of the EU regulating on is privacy/data protection (and tax but that's not a tech issue).
  - matt4077 10y ago
    The comparison is obviously warranted. I'd argue that there is a difference b/c: - The EU has a history of relatively strict data privacy laws, whereas Russia has no credibility in regards to any civil rights. whatsoever. - The EU is a much larger market than Russia. It's therefore unlikely that any significant companies would choose to leave the EU market and create an opening for local companies. Only a few data centers may be needed in the EU, and they just don't employ people or pay taxes in relevant amount. - Storage-in-the-EU is not actually a requirement – companies may store data anywhere as long as they can provide for the required safeguards. - I'm not completely firm on the genesis of the new data protection regulation, but I believe it was actually a reaction to the EU's Court of Justice's rulings (the "right to be forgotten" and the Facebook case). I have a hard time believing Supreme Court justices ruling with protectionism in mind.
pabloski 10y ago
The truth is irrelevant. We are in the middle of a new Maccartist era, and Russia is ( again ) the big bad bear. They ( the transnational oligarchy based in the US and UK ) are trying the last power grab and Putin is trying to block them. This is the reality in a nutshell. We can discuss about the nuances, but this is a power fight. Pure and simple. Russia obviously wants to survive in this fight, so it is trying to block its dependance on the west as much as possibile, starting with the new economy ( internet ). The western powers ( the ones who rob us workers of our savings ) want to extend their reach over the entire globe and Russia + China are the last bastion against this dystopia. Yes, there are elites, oligarchs, bad guys in Russia and China too, but they are too small to be a real danger for us ( the people ). So, what you say is true, but i suspect the western media will spin it in a way to make Russia look like a dictatorship, ruled by a mad tyrant who wants to go to war against the world.
- benevol 10y ago
  Nobody needs Russia to understand one should not use any of the US mass surveillance machines (Facebook|Google|Twitter|LinkedIn/Microsoft|Yahoo|Apple|etc). We just needed Snowden and that we got.
  - dogma1138 10y ago
    Or just read a EU report from the 90's which described the same apparatus....
    - SpaceRaccoon 10y ago
      Source?
      - dogma1138 10y ago
        Report on the existence of a global system for the interception of private and commercial communications (ECHELON interception system) (2001/2098(INI)). "The existence of a global system for intercepting private and commercial communications (the ECHELON interception system) A. whereas the existence of a global system for intercepting communications, operating by means of cooperation proportionate to their capabilities among the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand under the UKUSA Agreement, is no longer in doubt; whereas it seems likely, in view of the evidence and the consistent pattern of statements from a very wide range of individuals and organisations, including American sources, that its name is in fact ECHELON, although this is a relatively minor detail." http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+REPORT+A5-2001-0264+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//...
hota_mazi 10y ago
> It puts Apple and Google in a difficult position. I don't think so. Both Apple and Google have always been crystal clear that they mean to follow local laws. I don't see how removing these apps in Russia would be of any trouble to them.
george_ciobanu 10y ago
This is Russia's way to 1. Strike back at the US for the economic sanctions 2. Strengthen its economy by allowing local actors to develop without competition 3. Ensure that all major networks are within state control. It's non-trivial for these companies to switch storage, and it's also dangerous as that makes them more vulnerable to government snooping.
- kurthr 10y ago
  Not just snooping, but seizure and blackmail... sure would be a unfortunate if we had to remove these servers for a little examination, maybe you can do something for my little friend?
banku_brougham 10y ago
Not relevant to policy, but it should be noted: The LinkedIn app is horrible. I deleted it long ago and use the browser.
Sevii 10y ago
Sounds like they are trying to get the same deal most of the EU countries have, Germany, France, ... Where user data has to be stored in the home country.
jjawssd 10y ago
Russia does not want to become dependent on "the West" Is this a problem?
- kurthr 10y ago
  It might be a trade violation or bad for the proles, but it's certainly not a problem for the Russian Elite, if that's what you mean.
  - disordinary 10y ago
    I thought there were trading sanctions between Russian and the US now anyway?
disordinary 10y ago
We're probably going to see more of this as countries try and assert their sovereignty and laws in a post Brexit world.
logeek 10y ago
The US blocks websites that violate copyright law, because it's seen as important for US business to do so. Different countries may have different priorities on what they censor, but all do censor. How is this different?
- mgbmtl 10y ago
  Economics vs speech. The US sends people to jail if they break laws with regards to the economy (if you're on the wrong side of the status quo), whereas Russia sends people to jail if they philosophically disagree with the status quo.
FT_intern 10y ago
I'm not sure why LinkedIn is being targeted for privacy concerns. The entire point of the site is having a presentable, public profile. Most users want others to see them in the way that their LinkedIn profile depicts them to be. A large percentage of LinkedIn users purposely make almost all of their LinkedIn information publicly available. This is as opposed to more private data like personal, private messages on social network sites (I assume most LinkedIn messages are professional and tame), browsing history, etc.
- mgbmtl 10y ago
  Russia requires that Russian citizens (even those living abroad more than 6 months per year) declare their foreign bank accounts. Linkedin private conversations are a good way to investigate if they are having undeclared revenue from another country. (sure, it's easy to avoid, and so is using Facebook Messenger / private chat.. yet people still mostly default to that because it's easier)
- mattnewton 10y ago
  As suggested elsewhere, the law might cite privacy but really seems to be about Russian government access to the data.
rebelidealist 10y ago
Anyone know how this is even technically feasible for a giant app like Linkedin to separate out a portion of their data in Russia?
- ryfm 10y ago
  it's not feasible. But it's not the point for Russian authorities, otherwise they would have to ban a lot of different sites: a) any Internet store - like Amazon, Ebay, AliExpress you name it, as they all hold some 'private data' including name, address, cc info etc. b) any booking site - same as Internet stores c) any website which deals with Russian citizens - e.g. foreign embassies :) so the point is to try to block a big Internet entity and check if there is any backslash, any reaction or any anything :)
beshrkayali 10y ago
> The companies are strong proponents of open internet policies and free speech but are now being asked to be agents for governments that censor its citizens. What does requiring foreign companies to store data of a country's own citizens within its borders == censoring citizens?
- mattnewton 10y ago
  Because you are asking Russian citizens not talk to those companies. That is the censorship. They were giving the information up freely in exchange to linkedin's services, it is not like LinkedIn was spying and collecting the information themselves.
  - beshrkayali 10y ago
    No. They're asking foreign companies operating in Russian to store their data within the borders of the country, where the Russian gov has control + sovereignty. When a douchebag agency like NSA/CIA have direct back access (and sometimes provided by the company), it's possible that LinkedIn is involved and is therefor spying on citizens of other countries for the benefit of the US gov.
strictnein 10y ago
If you're looking for a good book covering Russia's attempts at harnessing/controlling/etc the Internet (both domestically and internationally): The Red Web: The Struggle Between Russia’s Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries https://www.amazon.com/Red-Web-Struggle-Dictators-Revolutionaries/dp/1610395735 https://www.amazon.com/Red-Web-Struggle-Dictators-Revolution...
mike-cardwell 10y ago
I always found it bizarre that nations would allow a situation to arise where a foreign nation builds up a massive database of all/most of their citizens conversations and relationships and movements. I mean. Would the US be OK if a company under Russian jurisdiction had a database of relationships and conversations and movements for most US citizens? Does not seem sane to me. I don't know what the solution is really, other than blocking access.

100 points by reimertz 10y ago

> comes weeks after a court blocked the professional networking service for flouting local laws > The action is the equivalent of a nation banning “Catcher in The Rye” yeah no, i dont think so

bostand 10y ago

Is linkedin being singled out or is this start of something bigger?

nobodyshere 10y ago
Nothing unexpected is happening. They have a law that requires storing Russian nationals' data on servers physically located in Russia. Linkedin refused to follow the law and got what was coming. While the law isn't that great, it is still there to be complied with.
- zzzcpan 10y ago
  Except that almost nobody complies with that law. This is more like making an example out of a linkedin and attempting to gain power over internet companies, they have been doing this for a few years already.
  - nobodyshere 10y ago
    Well, it all doesn't work like that. "Hey guys, nobody follows this law, so neither should we!" - Nope.
    - JumpCrisscross 10y ago
      > it...doesn't work like that That's exactly how it works in Russia.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - nobodyshere 10y ago
        Kind of. Except for when you get noticed or become too big to skip.
    - matt4077 10y ago
      It can (and should) actually work like that. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yick_Wo_v._Hopkins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yick_Wo_v._Hopkins ("Racially discriminatory application of a racially neutral statute violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.")
  - bootloop 10y ago
    I think it's more of an internet company trying to run a business in a country without respecting the law which applies to you if you do business there. This is in fact the case for many countries beside Russia and there is no valid reason for another country to allow a company, which is running operations from a country known to not respecting a persons privacy regardless of its citizenship, to run a business in your country without been able to protect your citizens.
    - jjawssd 10y ago
      Didn't you know that Silicon Valley has the moral high ground? Duh. Americans can do no wrong /s
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- sberder 10y ago
  This is exactly the same in China, coupled with the ICP license that makes for total control of what is accessible in the territory.
  - xyzzy_plugh 10y ago
    My understanding is that China requires that data for Chinese citizens is only stored in China (you can maybe export aggregate, anonymous data). Russia on the other hand requires that data for Russian citizens be stored in Russia. I don't believe they prevent export. I've heard of large companies complying by simply uploading a tarball to a Russian server periodically.
    - nobodyshere 10y ago
      So does South Korea. At least based on my experience in gaming industry. They also required encrypting all private data.
  - dilemma 10y ago
    And Europe. I guess they're all commies.
    - Semaphor 10y ago
      Our new data protection laws won't kick in till 2018. I expect the NYT will then write a large article about how undemocratic the EU is after companies get fined for disobeying (this is assuming they don't manage to work around it with a new privacy shield that somehow makes it okay to store the data on US servers and rendering the whole protection meaningless).
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- edblarney 10y ago
  "Linkedin refused to follow the law and got what was coming. " Then why does the law only apply to LinkedIn as opposed to the other 100K apps and services that store data in the US as opposed to Russia? I don't doubt the impetus of this law in a certain light, at the same time, there's some political games being played I think.
  - andreyz4k 10y ago
    There is a famous saying "Strict laws in Russia are compensated by optionality of their application".
  - dntlkatmyname 10y ago
    Nobody really knows. Presumably they just wanted to test it out on some big enough company (even though LinkedIn is anything but big in Russia). What's more weird is that LinkedIn just outright refused to comply, when all they had to do was issue an announcement and maybe rent some servers in Russia (don't even have to use them).

fwn 10y ago

Nope, Putin, that won't make the LinkedIn requests stop. Fun aside I can understand that authorities would try new approaches on smaller players first. The quality of the administrative insight isn't necessarily tied to the scale of the targeted platform.

logicallee 10y ago

I don't get it. I clicked through the article to see the "justification" since LinkedIn is extremely tame. For example, imagine if LinkedIn were banned from the United States - why would that happen? Well it could happen if a court ordered it to stop impersonating its users, it didn't stop and kept impersonating then, and then the court ordered it to be shut down as punishment. Kind of far-fetched, but not that far-fetched. Everyone knows LinkedIn illegally impersonated its users. So I was wondering what the justification would be here. So I clicked through. I didn't see the full article, but this is what I found "a court blocked the professional networking service for flouting local laws that require internet firms to store data on Russian citizens within the nation’s borders." So question: why didn't it store data on its citizens within the nation's borders? It doesn't seem that far-fetched of a requirement to me. Doesn't Germany have the same requirement? I didn't Google in-depth but found this language (about Germany) "20. What rules regulate the transfer of data outside your jurisdiction? The Federal Data Protection Act (BDSG) differentiates between transfer of personal data within the EU/EEA and outside the EU/EEA."[1] Isn't this more or less the same thing? While I'm not defending Russia's actions (according to a Reddit user journalists are jailed, Putin's opposition opponent is in a Russian graveyard with 5 bullets in him, etc etc), but this seems like something that Linkedin could have complied on? Or is there more to the story? [1] http://uk.practicallaw.com/3-502-4080 http://uk.practicallaw.com/3-502-4080

pizzapill 10y ago
I'm from Germany I can see Linked In in the appstore. Since 2000 there are Safe Harbor laws in place that regulate how data can be stored in the US etc. altough their privacy standards don't match EU and especially German standards. My government was thinking about changing those contracts during the NSA scandals but AFAIK we're stuck in negotiations atm. By the way those negotiations are a farce since our intelligence services will hand the data right over to the NSA anyways.
- robin_reala 10y ago
  To be pedantic, Safe Harbour died in 2015. The replacement is the EU-US Privacy Shield: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU-US_Privacy_Shield https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU-US_Privacy_Shield

fauigerzigerk 10y ago

This is a pretty confused and not very informative article. There isn't the slightest attempt to find out what the purpose of those "local laws" is. Censorship, consumer protection, privacy, anti-trust, protectionism, tax avoidance, law enforcement, it's all basically summed up as "Foreign governments causing trouble to US companies" That's pointless because it doesn't help putting pressure on the right party in the right conflict for the right reason.

edblarney 10y ago
It's a mixed bag. There are very real pragmatic reasons for Russians wanting to have their data stored locally. At the same time, theses laws can be applied very unevenly, and can often become means to play geopolitical games. This 'ban' may be on some level part of the constant diplomatic tit-for-tat that China/US/Russia play against one another. I mean - think of the other 100's of thousands of apps that store Russian's users data in the US, as opposed to Russia ... So messy :)
yaakov34 10y ago
These laws join other laws, the so-called anti-terrorist package from August 2014, which require service providers (defined very broadly to include such things as social networks and ISPs) to provide user data to the authorities upon request. If the server is physically in Russia and controlled by some Russian subsidiary, it is much harder for a company to evade such an order. Few people even bother to pretend that this is about anything other than closer control of Russian internet users by the Russian authorities. There is a weak spin about protecting the data of Russian users from foreign governments by placing it within Russia, which makes zero sense, since nothing prevents an American company from giving user data from its Russian server to the American government. And before someone says that the US does the same thing, note that something like 1000 people have already been imprisoned in the Russian Federation over various online comments and posts, and even Facebook likes. The fact that the US violates privacy also doesn't mean that it's all the same thing.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

rubiquity 10y ago

Putin must be tired of receiving friend requests from Polar Bears and other various Arctic recruiters.

bhouston 10y ago
Sergey Brin wanted me to be his 150th linkedin contact just yesterday. I must be important.

andreyz4k 10y ago

I'm from Russia, so I guess I could add some context here. A while ago our parliament created a pack of laws to "protect personal data of russian citizens". One of them ordered internet services to store all of the user data of russian citizens on servers, that are physically located in Russia. This law is in power since the beginning of 2016, but many big sites like LinkedIn and Facebook just ignored it. State authorities did nothing about it, but finally, in November they blocked LinkedIn in Russia, so now we ought to use some VPN or proxy to access it. And now they want to remove their apps from stores, despite they don't work without proxy as well.

akjainaj 10y ago
This is reasonable and, as far as I remember, the EU required the same as well.
- cpncrunch 10y ago
  Not quite. They just require that you adequately protect PII. Since that is very expensive to do, only large companies tend to do it. Smaller companies probably just ignore it... https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2015/10/european-data-on-usa-servers-safe-harbor/ https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2015/10/european-data-on-usa-...
- qaq 10y ago
  You have to account for market size the EU economy is huge Russian economy is about the size of large US city.
  - radiorental 10y ago
    This is more about sovereignty than GDP
    - chatmasta 10y ago
      Higher GDP allows an economic region to make more demands surrounding their sovereignty.

whack 10y ago

"The demand by Russian authorities to remove LinkedIn in Apple and Google app stores comes weeks after a court blocked the professional networking service for flouting local laws that require internet firms to store data on Russian citizens within the nation’s borders." Given NSA's monitoring activities, this is a surprisingly reasonable law. Maybe not a great one, but certainly reasonable. I wonder if the NSA activities will prove to be a watershed that kick off a tide of tech-nativism.

andreyz4k 10y ago
Given what I've heard about NSA, they are far more reasonable than our FSB (successor of KGB if anyone doesn't know). Our guys can easily use their right to "take for investigation" some servers just to protect a business of some of their colonels or friend of a colonel. And that makes storing a data in Russia a bit of a lottery.
- devoply 10y ago
  That's the thing. In the modern secular state you need a Constitution which is essentially a covenant between man and his government, that the government is actually representing will of the people. Without that sort of secular, yet holy, document and corruption you get this sort of cronyism in which a normal honest man does not have rights or the same rights as corrupt people with connections do. This then makes everything more difficult and unpredictable. The Russians and the Soviets before them have never figured this out. We still have problems when this sort of behavior seeps into our system, but we have pretty good ways of controlling this behavior, and a general revulsion of the public against it, helps keep it under control.
  - disordinary 10y ago
    New Zealand is rated as the second least corrupt country in the world and ranked fourth on the democracy index, yet it has no constitution.
    - 10y ago

raz32dust 10y ago

I guess LinkedIn itself is just being used as an example. It is a smaller fish compared to Facebook or Google, and the Russian citizens are not as dependent on it, so it is a good choice to set an example. Why everyone wants to have local data is more interesting. I can think of some points: - The US wields a lot of soft power by virtue of the fact that a lot of user data about members in other countries lives here. - Other countries want the ability to block access to particular sites and the user data at will without having to go through US law. - Hampering growth of US companies helps local copycat companies grow. - Requiring local servers, local office, make in X etc. promotes local economic activity. There is a critical mass of people who need to be using these services for these points to be viable. China clearly has more than the critical mass, so they easily get away with this sort of behavior and it does them more good than harm (I think). EU probably has it. Russia alone probably does not.

pdpi 10y ago
Data jurisdiction is by itself an enormous and nuanced topic. There's a very interesting case to be made about giving your users a choice, as both having data in your own country or some foreign sovereignty come with different trade offs.
nradov 10y ago
Ultimately user data locality issues are going to have to be settled in trade treaties.
_andromeda_ 10y ago
>It is a smaller fish compared to Facebook or Google, and the Russian citizens are not as dependent on it, so it is a good choice to set an example. Not necessarily accurate. LinkedIn is a Microsoft company and I wouldn't exactly call them a small fish. This might just be the first of many protectionist measures Russia will be adopting.

delegate 10y ago

This is not just a rogue request from some crazy official, but part of a larger plan to subdue and scare off foreign tech companies and replace them with 'local' tech, controlled by the state. These people are not playing games - this is ideological warfare in action. Tech companies should get political - that means get ready to temporarily loose certain markets in exchange for defending some core principles. They might refuse to accept it, but tech companies are currently the most powerful (dormant) political players in the world - this is why Putin et al want to either control or eliminate them. They should ignore the request, then be ready to close their offices and offer to relocate all employees to a foreign country. No Google, AppStore and Google Play means back to the 90s.

moolcool 10y ago
>This is not just a rogue request from some crazy official, but part of a larger plan to subdue and scare off foreign tech companies and replace them with 'local' tech, controlled by the state. Do you think EU's heavy handed regulation on web services is similar? I think you could make the case that it's also a form of protectionism.
- k-mcgrady 10y ago
  >> "heavy handed regulation on web services" Any you could point to? The only stuff I know of the EU regulating on is privacy/data protection (and tax but that's not a tech issue).
- matt4077 10y ago
  The comparison is obviously warranted. I'd argue that there is a difference b/c: - The EU has a history of relatively strict data privacy laws, whereas Russia has no credibility in regards to any civil rights. whatsoever. - The EU is a much larger market than Russia. It's therefore unlikely that any significant companies would choose to leave the EU market and create an opening for local companies. Only a few data centers may be needed in the EU, and they just don't employ people or pay taxes in relevant amount. - Storage-in-the-EU is not actually a requirement – companies may store data anywhere as long as they can provide for the required safeguards. - I'm not completely firm on the genesis of the new data protection regulation, but I believe it was actually a reaction to the EU's Court of Justice's rulings (the "right to be forgotten" and the Facebook case). I have a hard time believing Supreme Court justices ruling with protectionism in mind.

pabloski 10y ago

The truth is irrelevant. We are in the middle of a new Maccartist era, and Russia is ( again ) the big bad bear. They ( the transnational oligarchy based in the US and UK ) are trying the last power grab and Putin is trying to block them. This is the reality in a nutshell. We can discuss about the nuances, but this is a power fight. Pure and simple. Russia obviously wants to survive in this fight, so it is trying to block its dependance on the west as much as possibile, starting with the new economy ( internet ). The western powers ( the ones who rob us workers of our savings ) want to extend their reach over the entire globe and Russia + China are the last bastion against this dystopia. Yes, there are elites, oligarchs, bad guys in Russia and China too, but they are too small to be a real danger for us ( the people ). So, what you say is true, but i suspect the western media will spin it in a way to make Russia look like a dictatorship, ruled by a mad tyrant who wants to go to war against the world.

benevol 10y ago
Nobody needs Russia to understand one should not use any of the US mass surveillance machines (Facebook|Google|Twitter|LinkedIn/Microsoft|Yahoo|Apple|etc). We just needed Snowden and that we got.
- dogma1138 10y ago
  Or just read a EU report from the 90's which described the same apparatus....
  - SpaceRaccoon 10y ago
    Source?
    - dogma1138 10y ago
      Report on the existence of a global system for the interception of private and commercial communications (ECHELON interception system) (2001/2098(INI)). "The existence of a global system for intercepting private and commercial communications (the ECHELON interception system) A. whereas the existence of a global system for intercepting communications, operating by means of cooperation proportionate to their capabilities among the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand under the UKUSA Agreement, is no longer in doubt; whereas it seems likely, in view of the evidence and the consistent pattern of statements from a very wide range of individuals and organisations, including American sources, that its name is in fact ECHELON, although this is a relatively minor detail." http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+REPORT+A5-2001-0264+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//...

hota_mazi 10y ago

> It puts Apple and Google in a difficult position. I don't think so. Both Apple and Google have always been crystal clear that they mean to follow local laws. I don't see how removing these apps in Russia would be of any trouble to them.

george_ciobanu 10y ago

This is Russia's way to 1. Strike back at the US for the economic sanctions 2. Strengthen its economy by allowing local actors to develop without competition 3. Ensure that all major networks are within state control. It's non-trivial for these companies to switch storage, and it's also dangerous as that makes them more vulnerable to government snooping.

kurthr 10y ago
Not just snooping, but seizure and blackmail... sure would be a unfortunate if we had to remove these servers for a little examination, maybe you can do something for my little friend?

banku_brougham 10y ago

Not relevant to policy, but it should be noted: The LinkedIn app is horrible. I deleted it long ago and use the browser.

Sevii 10y ago

Sounds like they are trying to get the same deal most of the EU countries have, Germany, France, ... Where user data has to be stored in the home country.

jjawssd 10y ago

Russia does not want to become dependent on "the West" Is this a problem?

kurthr 10y ago
It might be a trade violation or bad for the proles, but it's certainly not a problem for the Russian Elite, if that's what you mean.
- disordinary 10y ago
  I thought there were trading sanctions between Russian and the US now anyway?

disordinary 10y ago

We're probably going to see more of this as countries try and assert their sovereignty and laws in a post Brexit world.

logeek 10y ago

The US blocks websites that violate copyright law, because it's seen as important for US business to do so. Different countries may have different priorities on what they censor, but all do censor. How is this different?

mgbmtl 10y ago
Economics vs speech. The US sends people to jail if they break laws with regards to the economy (if you're on the wrong side of the status quo), whereas Russia sends people to jail if they philosophically disagree with the status quo.

FT_intern 10y ago

I'm not sure why LinkedIn is being targeted for privacy concerns. The entire point of the site is having a presentable, public profile. Most users want others to see them in the way that their LinkedIn profile depicts them to be. A large percentage of LinkedIn users purposely make almost all of their LinkedIn information publicly available. This is as opposed to more private data like personal, private messages on social network sites (I assume most LinkedIn messages are professional and tame), browsing history, etc.

mgbmtl 10y ago
Russia requires that Russian citizens (even those living abroad more than 6 months per year) declare their foreign bank accounts. Linkedin private conversations are a good way to investigate if they are having undeclared revenue from another country. (sure, it's easy to avoid, and so is using Facebook Messenger / private chat.. yet people still mostly default to that because it's easier)
mattnewton 10y ago
As suggested elsewhere, the law might cite privacy but really seems to be about Russian government access to the data.

rebelidealist 10y ago

Anyone know how this is even technically feasible for a giant app like Linkedin to separate out a portion of their data in Russia?

ryfm 10y ago
it's not feasible. But it's not the point for Russian authorities, otherwise they would have to ban a lot of different sites: a) any Internet store - like Amazon, Ebay, AliExpress you name it, as they all hold some 'private data' including name, address, cc info etc. b) any booking site - same as Internet stores c) any website which deals with Russian citizens - e.g. foreign embassies :) so the point is to try to block a big Internet entity and check if there is any backslash, any reaction or any anything :)

beshrkayali 10y ago

> The companies are strong proponents of open internet policies and free speech but are now being asked to be agents for governments that censor its citizens. What does requiring foreign companies to store data of a country's own citizens within its borders == censoring citizens?

mattnewton 10y ago
Because you are asking Russian citizens not talk to those companies. That is the censorship. They were giving the information up freely in exchange to linkedin's services, it is not like LinkedIn was spying and collecting the information themselves.
- beshrkayali 10y ago
  No. They're asking foreign companies operating in Russian to store their data within the borders of the country, where the Russian gov has control + sovereignty. When a douchebag agency like NSA/CIA have direct back access (and sometimes provided by the company), it's possible that LinkedIn is involved and is therefor spying on citizens of other countries for the benefit of the US gov.

strictnein 10y ago

If you're looking for a good book covering Russia's attempts at harnessing/controlling/etc the Internet (both domestically and internationally): The Red Web: The Struggle Between Russia’s Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries https://www.amazon.com/Red-Web-Struggle-Dictators-Revolutionaries/dp/1610395735 https://www.amazon.com/Red-Web-Struggle-Dictators-Revolution...

mike-cardwell 10y ago

I always found it bizarre that nations would allow a situation to arise where a foreign nation builds up a massive database of all/most of their citizens conversations and relationships and movements. I mean. Would the US be OK if a company under Russian jurisdiction had a database of relationships and conversations and movements for most US citizens? Does not seem sane to me. I don't know what the solution is really, other than blocking access.