Why is the Moscow City Court fined Google 50 thousand rubles for reading the correspondence?

In January 2015, a resident of Yekaterinburg, Anton Burkov filed a lawsuit with the Zamoskvoretsky District Court, demanding to collect fifty thousand rubles from Google and stop reading his emails. The plaintiff found that the search engine violates the privacy of correspondence, scans it, analyzes the interests and shows contextual advertising on their basis. The Zamoskovoretsky court rejected the lawsuit, but in September the Moscow City Court satisfied Burkov’s demands and fined Google’s Russian office for the amount claimed . Moscow City Court explained its decision .

In 2013, Anton Burkov discussed the trip to Strasbourg by post of Gmail by the head of the European Law Department at the Humanitarian Institute in Yekaterinburg, after which he found advertisements for hotels and visa services. Burkov suggested that Google found out about his plans from correspondence and went to court. The lawyers of Google LLC said that the Russian representative office of Google does not own the e-mail service, but deals only with the placement of AdWords advertising, therefore, the claim must be submitted to Google Inc. in USA.

Moscow City Court did not agree with the arguments of lawyers. The Constitution of the Russian Federation guarantees confidentiality of correspondence, on which Google LLC, using the results of reading mail. The court did not admit that Google LLC does not manage AdWords - according to the judge, the company uses software violating the Constitution at its own risk: “bears independent risks, knowing that the software it uses violates the constitutional rights of citizens of the Russian Federation to privacy of private correspondence ".

The terms of the "privacy policy" the court found evidence of illegal actions of Google: "Our systems automatically analyze your content, including emails, to provide functions that are useful to you. These can be search results selected for you, relevant advertisements ... ”Another proof was a screenshot provided by Burkov - advertising slogans in Russian were based on the text of the letter in Gmail. The court decided: “the respondent, placing an advertisement in the claimant’s report, was guided by the results of the e-mail monitoring of the claimant, thereby violating the privacy of his correspondence”
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Chadbourne & Parke LLP lawyer Kyle Davis notes that most international companies in Russia have the same structure as Google LLC. This court decision may force corporations to review the structure for work in Russia - to ensure that subsidiaries are not responsible for the actions of the parent companies and vice versa.

Google’s user agreement mentions the company's intention to analyze letters, but few read it. For the court, this is not an argument, says Anastasia Ragulina, deputy director of Yakovlev and Partners. The secret of correspondence is violated in any case; let the robot read the letters, not the person.

Anastasia Astashkevich, head of the international law practice of the Chaadaev, Kheifetz and Partners Bar Association, believes that it will be difficult for Google to appeal the court’s decision and that it is not profitable for the corporation to draw attention to the fact that it protects the right to violate the privacy of correspondence. The head of the intellectual property group of the law firm “Yust” Denis Shumsky is confident that Google will continue to fight, either until it receives a satisfying solution, or until there are opportunities for it.

Google spokeswoman Alla Zabrovskaya told Kommersant that the decision of the Moscow City Court is being studied by the company's lawyers.