The business-focused global social network LinkedIn faces being blocked in Russia after a court ruled that it broke a new Russian law on data storage.
The Moscow city court on November 10 rejected an appeal by LinkedIn against a ruling that it broke a law requiring personal data on Russian citizens to be stored on servers within Russia.
The case had been brought against linked in by Roskomnadzor, the Russian state telecommunications and media regulator.
The new law is contained within surveillance legislation signed by President Vladimir Putin in July 2014.
Eva Galperin, from the U.S.-based nongovernmental Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), says non-Russia-based messaging services and social-media platforms cannot reasonably comply with Russia's new laws because of the prohibitive costs of new servers to store the enormous amounts of data required.
"They become de facto criminals whatever their actions," Galperin said. "That, in turn, gives the Russian state the leverage to extract from them" any concessions on eavesdropping the government desires.
"The impossibility of full compliance is not a bug [in the legislation]," Galperin said. "It's an essential feature."
