ICANN is seeking comment on the effectiveness of a revised procedure for handling conflicts between complying with WHOIS domain registration data requirements and global privacy laws, implemented in recent weeks (see 1704190042). ICANN said in a Wednesday news release it's seeking comment on the paper, which opens the review process on the procedure, through June 12. Input will be incorporated into a report and provided to the Generic Names Supporting Organization Council for its review, said ICANN. "Outputs from this assessment and comment process are expected to inform the next periodic review."
The Maine director for Donald Trump's presidential campaign launched a group targeting Silicon Valley executives and the "radical tech-left," saying in a Monday news release they used their "wealth and political influence" to take control of the internet, "erode the public's internet freedoms and wage war on alternative media." Founded by Christie-Lee McNally, Free Our Internet, a self-described "citizens" group, said it will support free expression and online speech, protect diverse ideas, and oppose government actions that limit internet openness and transparency. The nonprofit doesn't have any funding now, emailed spokesman Chad Wilkinson, who's also spokesman for Breitbart News Network, but it has been in discussions with other interested nonprofits and foundations, expects to have support shortly and will list financial supporters on its website. In its release and website, the group said Facebook, Google, and philanthropist and Democratic activist George Soros orchestrated a "secretive" campaign to pass FCC rules on net neutrality in 2015. Soros's firm didn't comment.
The ICANN board is planning two open meetings during the organization's March 11-16 conference in Copenhagen, ICANN said Thursday. An open meeting Saturday will focus on ICANN's anti-harassment policy, and a Sunday open meeting will focus on the organization's FY 2018 budget and Internet Assigned Numbers Authority operating plan.
There's “no rational ‘America first’ global internet policy that won’t break the internet,” said former U.S. Coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy Daniel Sepulveda in a Friday Facebook post. Sepulveda left the State Department in January a week before the inauguration of President Donald Trump, who pledged to take an “America First” attitude toward trade and other economic issues. “The benefits of the democratization of power and opportunity that the global platform creates must be shared for our own good,” Sepulveda said. “And the challenges the global platform creates -- from enabling criminal or harmful activity to challenging jurisdictional control over the development of local societies -- do not allow for a situation in which we win and others lose by putting America first.” Either “we solve these challenges together or we all lose,” Sepulveda said. “As we close ourselves off from people, goods, and services from abroad, nations will respond, in part, by closing themselves off to us digitally or by trying to extract some price for continued interconnection. If our friends across the aisle want to head this way, at least do it consciously.”
ICANN’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer sought to dispel myths that there are “keys that cause the Internet to function (or not to function),” saying Monday such claims are “incorrect.” Various media outlets have for several years published articles that claim the Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) mechanism constitutes the “keys to the internet,” but it's only a “single part of the Internet -- the mechanism for authenticating the data in the domain name system,” the CTO’s office said in a blog post. “It is based on a hierarchy of [ICANN-managed] cryptographic keys starting at the root of the DNS.” The Trusted Community Representatives that are present when activating the cryptographic keys “perform a valuable service, but for a very limited operation,” the CTO’s office said. “The Internet consists of many different systems, and the DNS is just one of them. Controlling one aspect of the Internet, such as DNSSEC, does not lead to full control of other aspects.”
NTIA officials encouraged and aided Google Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf in March 2014 as he wrote an opinion piece in favor of the now-completed Internet Assigned Numbers Authority transition, according to a batch of archived emails that Americans for Limited Government (ALG) obtained in late January as part of its Freedom of Information Act request on analyses of the legal and policy justifications for the handoff. ALG criticized NTIA Thursday for “sitting on” the “most responsive documents” related to the conservative group's FOIA request until after the IANA oversight switchover's Oct. 1 completion (see 1610030042 and 1702020073). Then-NTIA Associate Administrator Fiona Alexander initially contacted Cerf March 19, 2014, the day The Wall Street Journal published a column by former Publisher Gordon Crovitz that criticized the legal justification for the handoff. NTIA announced plans for the switchover the week before (see report in the March 17, 2014, issue). “While the press has gotten better there have been a couple of unhelpful oped’s including” the Crovitz column, Alexander said in an email to Cerf that was also copied to then-NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling. “Obviously those folks are uni[n]formed but our press folks were wondering if you were going to write something.” Cerf said he had already written a commentary supporting the transition but said he was “struggling with the PR team at Google who seem very reluctant to let me get out in front of this because they don’t want this to be about Google. Let me see if we can accelerate the ICANN piece.” Cerf forwarded NTIA officials a copy of his draft, which they believed should more directly counter Crovitz. “Obviously [Crovitz] lacks any technical understanding” of the transition, Alexander said. NTIA suggested Cerf add a paragraph to counter claims that the handoff would lead to government capture and censorship of the domain name system. The version of Cerf's commentary that eventually ran in a May/June 2014 IEEE publication included an amended version of the NTIA-suggested paragraph, though it didn't mention concerns about censorship. NTIA's attempt to influence the content of Cerf's opinion piece may have constituted direct engagement in “propaganda on an issue of public import,” which was prohibited in the FY 2014 omnibus federal spending bill, said ALG Senior Editor Robert Romano in a Friday blog post. That NTIA waited almost three years to release the emails between Cerf and NTIA officials shows the agency knew “it was embarrassing,” Romano said. “But it might have been devastating at the time. The fact that the agency would collude with a vice president at Google and a government contractor, ICANN, illegally as it turned out, in formulating an oped beneficial to Google and the monopolist ICANN, would have been scandalous.” The Department of Commerce, Google and ICANN didn't comment.
Americans for Limited Government criticized NTIA Thursday for “sitting on” the “most responsive documents” in the conservative group’s Freedom of Information Act request on analyses of the legal and policy justifications for the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority transition until after the switchover’s completion. NTIA released a batch of documents on the IANA oversight handoff to ALG Jan. 26, almost four months after the transition’s Oct. 1 completion (see 1609300065 and 1610030042). ALG claimed the only NTIA documents on legal justification for the handoff were created March 25, 2014 -- 11 days after then-Administrator Larry Strickling announced the transition (see report in the March 17, 2014, issue) and two days after the Wall Street Journal's Gordon Crovitz raised concerns about the legal justification for the transition. “If these documents had been made available in a timely manner, even in the redacted form we now see, [ALG] and others would have had legal recourse to appeal the privileged determination that they were exempt documents,” said ALG President Rick Manning in a news release. “It took almost 3 years to produce the most responsive documents in our FOIA and only now is the agency claiming its privileged exemptions when it is too late to appeal except for the historical record.” The fact “that whatever legal justification existed for the Internet giveaway was sat upon until long after the transition was over” denied critics of the switchover “a critical indication about whether any legal analysis was performed prior to the transition's announcement,” Manning said. NTIA didn’t comment.
ICANN is “monitoring and evaluating” the effect that President Donald Trump's executive order curtailing immigration, at least temporarily, from seven Muslim-majority countries will have some its community members’ ability to travel to the organization’s upcoming March 11-16 meeting in Copenhagen, the board said in a Tuesday blog post. The executive order reportedly prevented ICANN board member Kaveh Ranjbar from flying to Los Angeles Monday for a board workshop. Ranjbar, chief information officer for nonprofit regional registry RIPE NCC, was born in Iran and lives in the Netherlands. Trump’s order “may make it more difficult for certain community members” to travel to Copenhagen for the ICANN meeting and the organization said it's “trying to learn all we can about the implementation of the Order and what it means in practical terms for the ICANN community, employees and Board in the near and longer term.” The organization urged “all governments to help support the freedom of participation in ICANN and similar bodies.” Tech sector stakeholders have criticized Trump’s order (see 1701290001, 1701300023 and 1701310049). ICANN did not explain why it believes the Trump order could affect travel to the Copenhagen meeting.
ICANN and NTIA formally terminated their joint affirmation of commitments, NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling said Friday in a letter to ICANN Chairman Steve Crocker. That follows months after the completion of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority oversight transition (see 1609300065 and 1610030042). ICANN has fully incorporated the agreement’s provisions into its governing documents, said Global Domains Division President Akram Atallah in a blog post. “ICANN's commitment to remain a not-for-profit corporation, headquartered in the United States of America is embedded into ICANN's Articles of Incorporation, and in the Bylaws, which specify that ICANN's California office is its principal place of business.” Strickling emphasized the need for stakeholders to provide “opportunities for all interested parties to have a voice in decision making, not just those most directly involved or impacted by ICANN.” Decisions should “be done in a transparent manner that affords the opportunity to participate for those not directly engaged in ICANN’s supporting organizations and advisory committees,” Strickling said.
The ICANN board selected San Juan and Barcelona as the host cities for two of its three 2018 meetings, the organization said Thursday. San Juan will host the ICANN meeting March 10-15. Barcelona will welcome the meeting Oct. 20-26, ICANN said. San Juan was originally to be the site of ICANN's November meeting, but the organization moved it to Hyderabad, India, in response to concerns about the Zika virus outbreak (see 1605180029). ICANN hasn't selected a city for its June 18-21, 2018 meeting.