Roskomnadzor warned portal “Judicial decisions” for publishing a judicial decision

St. Petersburg Information Agency "Judicial Decisions of the Russian Federation" received a warning from Roskomnadzor for publishing decisions of Russian courts. If the agency continues to publish on its site public information from the sites of Russian courts, then Roskomnadzor threatens to place the court rulings site in the “black list” of resources with information that is prohibited for distribution in the Russian Federation.

The story sounds like a nonsense from a parallel reality: for the first time in history, the Russian media received a warning for verbatim reproduction of a court sentence .
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Unfortunately, this is the actual practice of Russian legislation. In this case, Roskomnadzor refers to Article 4 of the Law of the Russian Federation “ On Mass Media ”.

The article “The Inadmissibility of Abusing the Freedom of Mass Media ” prohibits the use of mass media for disclosing secrets specifically protected by law.


The concept of “secrets” is quite multifaceted: see “ List of regulatory acts classified as restricted ”. This includes state secrets, trade secrets, tax secrets, bank secrets, medical secrets, notarial secrets, and so on. And among other things - personal data (any information relating directly or indirectly to a specific or definable individual (subject of personal data)) .

Restrictions on the dissemination of personal data are defined in Article 7 of the Federal Law of 27.07.2006 N 152- “On Personal Data”. The article " Confidentiality of personal data " reads:

Operators and other persons who have obtained access to personal data are obliged not to disclose to third parties and not to distribute personal data without the consent of the subject of personal data, unless otherwise provided by federal law.

Apparently, on the basis of this definition, Roskomandzor issued its warning.



The occasion seems rather far-fetched. The administrators of the website “Judicial Decisions of the Russian Federation” are confident that Roskomnadzor uses a pretext to deliberately prevent journalists and the media from disseminating information about participants in legal proceedings.

Lawyers of the Agency “Judicial Decisions of the Russian Federation” consider that some personal data — information about the facts, events and circumstances of a citizen’s private life that allow identifying his personality — is confidential information in accordance with the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation, but is not a secret in the legal sense this word. In other words, Roskomnadzor simply uses legal tricks to stop the dissemination of information about court decisions, which from an ugly side show the work of the judicial system of the Russian Federation.

The funny thing is that Roskomnadzor has no complaints about the sites of the courts that publish court decisions in the public domain (indeed, these are little visited sites), but there are complaints about the media that repost these reports from official sources !

It should be noted that, in accordance with Article 38 of the same Law of the Russian Federation “ On Mass Media ”, citizens have the right to promptly receive reliable information on the activities of state bodies, local governments, organizations, public associations, and their officials through the mass media.

Moreover, in accordance with Article 38 , the editors are not responsible for the dissemination of information constituting an abuse of the freedom of the media in the event that this information is present in mandatory messages (which include court decisions addressed to the editorial board) or they are contained in press materials services of state bodies, organizations, institutions, enterprises, bodies of public associations .

In this case, the decisions of the courts, published on the official websites of the courts, fully correspond to the description of the information, for the distribution of which the editorial board is not responsible.

The information agency “Judicial Decisions of the Russian Federation” reports that it is not the first time when Roskomnadzor sends illegal claims to protect the interests of criminals and fraudsters who demand to remove personal information about themselves from the Internet in accordance with the recently adopted law on the “right to oblivion”: see details the article “ The authority of Mihas took advantage of the“ right to oblivion ”and deleted his past from the search engines .”

Surprisingly, now the authorities (Roskomnadzor) are forced to protect the interests of former scammers and criminals, including those who have committed crimes against the authorities and the state. This is a legal incident.

If Roskomnadzor, after several warnings issued, blocks the website “Court decisions” for publishing court decisions, then this incident threatens to turn into real insanity.

“The principles of publicity of legal proceedings and the need to publish the texts of court decisions with data on the participants of the processes are supported by all - both the servants of Themis and human rights defenders,” said Pavel Netupsky, editor-in-chief of the news agency Judicial Decisions of the Russian Federation. - Only employees of Roskomnadzor categorically reject the principle of freedom of speech. Moreover, they act in the interests of dubious individuals and create various "podklyans" to journalists.

Maybe about the "podlyanok" chief editor slightly exaggerates, but the actions of Roskomnadzor really look very strange.

“The website, created for the convenience of citizens, due to which they will not have to comb the entire Runet in search of a court decision of interest to them, for some reason the regulator decided to subject it to unfounded pressure. We consider this to be another manifestation of the censorship prohibited by the Russian Constitution and we hope that the fact of issuing a warning to the site “Judicial Decisions” is just an error in the work of Roskomnadzor, ”human rights activists from the Center for Protection of Digital Rights and the RosComSvoboda movement wrote .

The Agency “Judicial Decisions of the Russian Federation” considers the claims of Roskomnadzor illegal and stated that it is not going to remove any information from the published documents. Claims Roskomnadzor will be challenged in court.

We are also waiting for a comment by Roskomnadzor in connection with this situation.

UPD. Roskomnadzor has published an official comment .

On the situation with the warning to the online edition of "Judicial Decisions of the Russian Federation"
July 5, 2016

Roskomnadzor conducted inspections on the fact of receiving four complaints of citizens of the Russian Federation regarding the editorial staff of the network media "Judicial Decisions of the Russian Federation." The subject of the complaints is the posting on the website of the specified media the personal data of the participants in the court proceedings.

As a result of the checks, it was established that the editors of the mass media “Judicial Decisions of the Russian Federation” place the personal data of the participants in the judicial proceedings in violation of the legislation of the Russian Federation. In three cases, the facts of the placement of personal data of participants in the trial in excess were established. In one case, a judicial act of a closed court session is placed, which provides information about the state of health of a participant in a civil trial.

Federal Law 262- No. 262- “On Ensuring Access to Information on the Activities of Courts in the Russian Federation”, in order to ensure security, determines the maximum set of information about participants in a legal process that can be published. This is the name and initials. The publication of a wider set of personal data of participants in the judicial process goes beyond the requirements of Article 15 of this law.

The media when publishing information about the activities of the courts must be guided by their specific legislation. Article 4 of the Federal Law “On Mass Media” limits the possibility of publication in the mass media of information protected by law, including personal data of participants in the judicial process.

To the editorial office of the media "Judicial Decisions of the Russian Federation", letters were repeatedly sent about the revealed violations of the legislation of the Russian Federation on personal data. These letters were ignored by the editors.

On June 22, 2016, Roskomnadzor issued a warning to the editorial board of the online publication “Judicial Decisions of the Russian Federation” for violating the requirements of art. 4 of the Law "On Mass Media".

UPD 2 . The representative of the IA “Judicial Decisions of the Russian Federation” registered on Geektimes ( SudReshenia ) and published a link to the official response to the Roskomnadzor comment.