Gattarov gives Facebook 1 month to revise data use policy rules

Member of the Federation Council Ruslan Gattarov intends to get back to the infringements of the rule of law by Facebook in early October within the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, if the company doesn’t revise within a month its documents so that they comply with European and Russian legislation. This was said in a press release published on Tuesday, September 3, by the Federation Council’s interim commission on information society development. The press release also says that US-based Facebook social network didn’t take into account part of Ruslan Gattarov’s claims when amending Statement of Rights and Responsibilities and Data Use Policy (new amendments published August 30). “Not all paragraphs discussed at the meeting (with Facebook's Head of Policy for the Nordic region Thomas Myrup Kristensen on August 22) have been reflected in the amendments,” the press release says. Gattarov explained that in new Facebook’s rules the objectives of collecting and processing personal data are not clearly specified, as it is required by EU Directive on the protection of individuals with regard to personal data processing and free movement of such data. Additionally, the company hasn’t narrowed the grounds to pass users’ data to third parties, as it is required by the federal law On Personal Data. In mid-June, the Federation Council held a session devoted to the issue of the secret program PRISM that allowed US intelligence to connect with companies’ servers and gain access to personal data, including personal data of Russians. It was reported that among the companies linked to PRISM were Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, AOL, Skype and Apple. At the end of the meeting Gattarov said that the commission on information society development intended until the end of the summer to check user agreements of Google, Facebook, Twitter and Yahoo. To date, meetings on the ways of personal data use have been held with representatives of Google and Facebook.