MOSCOW, May 18. /TASS/. The bill regulating the work of IT giants in Russia may imply that foreign owners of the internet resources that do not have representative offices in the country are banned from working with new Russian users if these companies store their personal data outside of Russia, head of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy Alexander Khinshtein told reporters on Tuesday. He is one of the authors of the initiative.
"In theory, yes," said Khinshtein, responding to the relevant question from TASS.
The lawmaker explained that in order to apply such a sanction, companies must not only collect data from Russians, but also transfer them to foreign servers.
"This is primarily about the cross-border transfer of personal data," he said.
Khinshtein added that gaming resources are likely to be outside the scope of the bill. In addition, it is not yet clear whether the document will affect application stores, the lawmaker said.
The lawmaker also said that the law on regulating the activities of large foreign technology companies is expected to be adopted before the end of the spring session.
"Yes, we plan to adopt it before the end of the session. The President's instruction was to adopt it as soon as possible, so there is no other way. We still have four weeks, not counting the current one," Khinshtein said.
Earlier it was reported that the new law would oblige the owners of foreign Internet resources with a daily audience of over 500,000 Russians to open official representative offices in the Russian Federation.
Khinshtein said that the refusal to open a branch in Russia may entail a ban on the distribution of advertising on the Internet resource and about this resource itself, a ban on making payments to it, as well as a ban on the collection and cross-border transfer of personal data.
The new law also implies that users of the relevant Internet platforms should be informed about the violation of the Russian legislation, the lawmaker said.
Earlier, President Vladimir Putin instructed his administration and the government to submit proposals on additional requirements for foreign tech companies operating in the Internet, including the opening of their representative offices in Russia, by August 1.