Blacklist of fans: stadium security on guard or warning for fans?
The next blacklist of 109 fans who now can't visit world cup football matches has been recently published. Realnoe Vremya tells who is on the list and whether it breaches these people's rights.
Blacklist from the Ministry of Internal Affairs
On 10 October, Life published the list of Russian fans who are forbidden from visiting 2018 World Cup matches with a link to Mash Telegram channel. The document has 109 fans with one woman among them. If somebody from the list appears in the tournament, they will be fined up to 25,000 rubles or administrative arrest of 15 days.
The first blacklist of fans in Russia was made up in October 2015. Then over 2,700 people were banned. However, one year later the list was reduced to 197 fans. A big job of fan movements of football clubs who started to organise their activity more carefully helped it a lot. This April President of the Russian Football Union Vitaly Mutko already told about 150 fans who would be banned from visiting world cup matches.
The reduction of the list seems to decrease the 'explosiveness' of fans – in any case, the indignation is not so expressive. Aleksey Yerunov, former director working with Lokomotiv fans who was arrested during the disturbances at the 2016 Euro in France, is the most famous character of this document. Aleksey was released from French prison some time later, but the club decided to fire him. Lokomotiv fans even visually boycotted in one of the matches of the team due to that. Now Yerunov is on the list of banned fans, but the reaction among fans in social networks is not so furious.
Another two people who were arrested together with Yerunov in France – Nikolay Morozov and Sergey Gorbachev – are not on the list. Neither is there Aleksandr Shprygin, head of the All-Russian Union of Fans (AUF). This organisation was banned from cooperating with the RFU also due to the disturbances at the 2016 Euro. AUF has not been given FAN ID to the Confederations Cup recently. However, at this moment, very Aleksandr specified on his Twitter and noted that his case had another punishment system. ''The spectators who can't visit games by court decision and those who were divested of FAN ID to the Confederations Cup are two different things,'' the AUF head wrote on his Twitter.
Is the publication of the list a bread of the law on personal data?
Meanwhile, probably the very fans whose names were on the list did not like the publication of this kind of list. First of all, a possible mistake in the list can't be excluded. Secondly, a question about the protection of personal data of the mentioned people arises. We asked legal practitioner Ilnur Ibragimov this question.
''Yes, publication of this list can breach the federal law On Personal Data because it contains the full names of the people who are unlikely to have permitted to be mentioned in such a doubtful context. I think in this context there are moments the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media can pay attention to.''
What should the sides wait for in this case?
If a breach of the media is detected, there can be imposed administrative fines and a warning from the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media. It is a kind of 'yellow card' that can easily turn into red if such actions repeat and lead to the ban of the online resource in the end. Moreover, the mentioned people can complain about violation of their honour and business reputation if the published data are false.
But jurist of Ekon-Profi juridical company Igor Parkhachev expressed an opposite version about responsibility for the blacklist's publication. According to him, in this case, it is difficult to urge both the very information source – the Telegram channel – and those who reposted it to assume the responsibility.
The full name doesn't allow to identify a person whom we are talking about without other data. In other words, the law On Personal Data forbids distribution of these personal data when they allow to correlate them with a person. This is why the distribution of the full name in itself doesn't breach this law.
Even if this list is not confirmed by anybody and not published with a link to the Telegram channel?
First of all, it is very difficult to urge a Telegram channel to assume the responsibility because there is not a person who published the news. In addition, I will repeat that the full name, of course, is personal data. But it is not enough to identify a person. It is not unique information, people can be namesakes. If there were any data, it would breach the law On Personal Data. It is clear that such data can be taken from an internal publication. At the same time, we can name them impersonal, consequently, the newspapers that published this list don't assume any responsibility.
It seems that the current blacklist of fans is unlikely to be the last one. And it is not excluded that the number of names on it will increase by the world cup. This damaging material can be a kind of signal for fans to make them tighten control at Russian stadiums or the international community of football fans who jealously follow the preparation for the Mundial in Russia.