As people point out in comments below, the law does no such thing. It doesn't prohibit storing user data outside of Russia, so it doesn't offer any privacy protections whatsoever. What it does is require that data to also be stored inside Russia, where it is subject to warrants (and warrantless wiretapping under SORM-2 and similar arrangements). Which is really everything you need to know about the purpose of the law.

Speaking more broadly - yeah, Russia is an authoritarian populist regime with a known penchant for human rights abuses and suppression of political dissent. And so it's going to be judged as such when it does things, not equally to any other country. This is similar to how we judge people differently, and ascribe different motivations, based on their past actions that we know about.

I'm Russian. The only cliches that I have about Russia are those derived from my experience growing up and living in Russia for 25 years of my life, before finally deciding that it isn't going to get any better, and there's nothing I can do to fix it.

Are you able to fix much at where you are now? Is it going to get any better?

One other aspect is the extreme degree of federalism in US. When looking at it from the outside, people generally tend to pay more attention to what's happening on the federal level. But in truth, state and local politics are much more relevant to day-to-day stuff, and there's a very broad range to pick from when deciding which state to live in. Of course, in practice you also get limitations like "where can I actually find a job?" etc; but there's still plenty of options).

And state and especially local politics are easier to influence, too. State politics more so in states that have some form of voter initiatives (which mine does), which rewards grassroots bottom-up efforts.

I believe so. Or, to put it more precisely - I believe my chances of fixing things, and of seeing better things come, are much higher in US than in Russia. Even now.

The problem is, that legislation does not actually protect citizen data. All code is still controlled by LinkedIn, and Russian goverment still have no idea what it does. If FBI (or CIA or any other agency) comes to LinkedIn with an order, then does it matter if the technician serving the request pulls the data from Russian, European or US database? The data will be delivered anyway.

Moreover, the law does not actually prevent the companies from storing data somewhere else -- Article 12 mentions many allowed reasons to send the data to other countries.

What this law, however, allows is for government to apply pressure on the company by treating to seize their servers (such as this case: https://torrentfreak.com/police-shut-down-russian-rapidshare... ). I see no other reason for the law.

> I see no other reason for the law.

Petty attempt to force big companies to pay for Russian hosting.