On Friday, the State Duma's lower house, the Russian Federation's equivalent of a parliament, approved a bill which restricts search engines from listing people's private information, reports Reuters. The bill has similarities to the European Union's 'right to be forgotten' 2014 court decision, which grants people the right to not have their information come up on search engines like Google. For the Russian bill to become law it now needs only a signature from President Vladimir Putin, who has yet to express any issue with it.
Like the EU's 'right to be forgotten,' an individual will need to send in a request to a search engine to have their information removed. The state sponsored TASS news agency broadly interpreted the criteria for removal; stating removal depends on the info being no longer relevant due to certain events or actions.
Yandex, Russia's largest search engine, wasn't pleased with the bill. In a statement, they said the bill will restrict the Russian people's free access to public information. However, the search engine was granted some changes to the original law, such as requiring the requests to cite which web pages should be unlisted along with being given 10-days to comply. Yandex is still far from pleased with the final version, believing that many changes need to be made.
Yandex's response is similar to Google's opinion on the EU's 'right to be forgotten' law. Google has also struggled in drawing the line on what information should be personal or public knowledge.
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