OREANDA-NEWS  At the plenary session on Tuesday, the State Duma adopted in the first reading two bills on tougher penalties for personal data leaks.

The draft laws propose to introduce new types of administrative offenses and multiply fines. In some cases, liability will be expressed in tens and hundreds of millions of rubles, and for data thieves - up to 10 years in prison, the co-author of the initiative said earlier, Secretary of the General Council of United Russia, First Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council Andrei Turchak said earlier. He noted that many companies perceive people's personal information as a way of earning money and do not protect it properly.

"The current measures of responsibility for data leakage (maximum 100 - 300 thousand rubles for legal entities) do not stimulate many people. As a result, today the circulation of databases with personal data on the black market is estimated at 20 thousand. They contain information about about 80% of the Russian population," Turchak noted and added that, according to the most conservative estimates, the damage from leaks last year alone amounted to about 8 billion rubles.

"United Russia is making amendments to the Administrative and Criminal Codes on behalf of the president. Responsibility will grow along with the volume of "leaked" information. The punishment will vary depending on the number of citizens whose rights have been violated. The fines will be even tougher if the most sensitive data, for example, medical information," Turchak stressed.

The amount of fines for officials will range from 800 thousand to 2 million rubles, for legal entities from 3 to 15 million. "For repeated violations, the organization can already pay hundreds of millions of rubles (depending on the company's revenue)," Turchak said.

The head of the Duma Committee on Information Policy, Alexander Khinshtein, previously noted that turnover fines will amount to 0.1 to 3% of revenue for a calendar year or part of the current year, not less than 15 million rubles and not more than 500 million rubles.

In addition, criminal liability is provided for both professional cybercriminals and ordinary employees of companies who decided to make money by "leaking" information.