Two Congressional Research Service reports released Friday via the Federation of American Scientists didn’t include a final determination of whether NTIA should allow the planned Internet Assigned Numbers Authority oversight transition to proceed. They said Congress has an important role in evaluating ICANN’s IANA transition-related plans. Congress is “likely to closely examine” the IANA transition-related proposals that ICANN submitted to NTIA March 10, CRS said in a Wednesday-dated report. “The institutional nature of Internet governance could have far-reaching implications on important policy decisions that will likely shape the future evolution of the Internet.” Members of the House Communications Subcommittee said March 17 that they are increasingly at ease with the direction of the IANA transition but promised to continue to exercise oversight over the transition process until it concludes (see 1603170051). Questions about Internet governance are becoming “more pressing, with national governments recognizing an increasing stake in ICANN policy decisions, especially in cases where Internet DNS [domain name system] policy intersects with national laws and interests,” CRS said in a Tuesday-dated report. Congress should evaluate the IANA plans based in part on “what organizational structures and safeguards should be in place within the multistakeholder transition plan to ensure that the domain name system remains stable, efficient, and free from the disproportionate influence of intergovernmental entities (such as the United Nations) as well as from other governments who may be hostile to U.S. interests,” CRS said. IANA transition skeptics have cited NTIA oversight of IANA as a “backstop” that “has given Internet stakeholders confidence that the integrity and stability of the DNS is being sufficiently overseen,” CRS said. Transition supporters have said if the switch doesn’t occur, the U.S. “will continue to be in the paradoxical and problematic position of opposing moves in intergovernmental fora to increase the power of governments in governing the Internet, while at the same time maintaining its unilateral authority over the Internet DNS by virtue of the IANA contract,” CRS said.
ICANN's ombudsman is continuing to conduct a confidential investigation into allegations of sexual harassment during ICANN’s meeting earlier this month in Marrakech, Morocco. The group does “not condone any such conduct, and there should be zero tolerance for it within the community,” said acting CEO Akram Atallah in a blog post Friday. “ICANN’s staff and Board takes the issue of harassment or other improper conduct at its meetings very seriously.” The behavior standards that ICANN stakeholders are expected to follow during ICANN meetings don’t specifically address sexual harassment incidents, but they do “provide our global, diverse multistakeholder community with a set of high-level guidelines for interacting with one another, which encompasses harassment and other improper treatment of others,” Atallah said. The ICANN board is “looking at whether it makes sense to enhance this language” in light of the incident in Marrakech, he said. ICANN also wants the community to lead any changes to its policy for handling sexual harassment complaints, Atallah said.
ICANN’s 2017 meetings will be in Copenhagen, Johannesburg and Abu Dhabi, it said Friday. ICANN will meet in Copenhagen March 11-16, 2017, in Johannesburg June 26-29 and Abu Dhabi Oct. 28-Nov. 3. ICANN also confirmed this year's June 27-30 meeting will now be in Helsinki, Finland. It said in February it would move the June 27-30 meeting from Panama City amid concerns about the outbreak of the Zika Virus in Panama and other nations in Latin America (see 1602080015). ICANN will meet Oct. 29-Nov. 4 in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee continued debating Tuesday into early evening whether to adopt a document that would say the GAC is still unable to reach consensus on supporting or rejecting the Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability's (CCWG-Accountability) proposed recommendations for changing ICANN accountability mechanisms. The GAC is expected to say in its response it “has no objection” to the ICANN board transmitting the existing CCWG-Accountability proposal to NTIA. GAC members indicated they fully support nine of the 12 recommendations included in the CCWG-Accountability proposal but weren't sure whether divisions about three other recommendations mean they shouldn't partially support the proposal. GAC, the Country Code Names Supporting Organization and the Generic Names Supporting Organization all need to reach a conclusion by Wednesday whether they support or reject the CCWG-Accountability proposal. The ICANN board is to vote on the CCWG-Accountability proposal and a final Internet Assigned Numbers Authority transition plan Thursday as part of ICANN's meeting in Marrakech, Morocco (see 1603040065). GAC's main sticking point in reaching consensus in Marrakech again involved how to handle CCWG-Accountability's recommendations on GAC's status within ICANN after the IANA transition. CCWG-Accountability recommended the ICANN board be allowed to reject consensus ICANN advice via a 60 percent majority vote. The working group also included a carve-out in its proposal that would bar the GAC from participating in final community votes on taking enforcement action when an ICANN community member objects to ICANN board implementation of GAC advice. GAC Vice Chairwoman Olga Cavalli, also one of Argentina's GAC representatives, led France and six other Latin American nations in objecting to both portions of the CCWG-Accountability proposal (see 1602190047). GAC told CCWG-Accountability in January it wasn't able to reach consensus on whether to support an earlier version of the accountability proposal amid similar concerns about earlier versions of the GAC-related recommendations (see 1601260067).
The federal government will let neither China nor any other government take charge of the domain name process, said Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker Thursday, restating a long-held U.S. position that a multistakeholder apparatus should govern the process. She responded to questions from Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., during a FY 2017 budget hearing before Senate Appropriations's Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies Subcommittee. With ICANN CEO Fadi Chehadé leaving to become co-chairman of a high-level advisory committee to the Chinese government-led World Internet Conference (see 1602240035), Lankford asked Pritzker what China's role could be. "What he’s choosing to do afterwards is his business," she replied. "Our concern is to make sure that, whether it’s China or any other government, because there are other governments that would like to take over the domain name process and we’re not going to allow that. That is not the objective here. The objective is to keep it in the multistakeholder domain." Lankford, echoing concerns of other lawmakers about China's role, said "it's very, very important" to keep the Internet "open, free and not limited. But when you’re dealing with China in the way this has been dealt with in so many places, it raises red flags to me on that.”
ICANN is moving a June 27-30 policy forum from Panama City, Panama, to a to-be-determined location “due to the severity of the Zika Virus outbreak” in Panama and other nations in Latin America, the group said Friday. The Centers for Disease Control has identified active Zika virus transmissions as far north as Mexico and as far south as Brazil, with Panama’s government reporting 50 cases of Zika infection. “A search is currently underway to identify an alternate location where the Zika Virus is not a concern,” ICANN said. It said in October that it was revamping its meetings strategy in part by replacing its traditional June meetings with shorter policy-oriented meetings that don’t include topic sessions, public forums or an ICANN board meeting.
The Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN’s Accountability (CCWG-Accountability) is considering how to revise its draft recommendation on how the ICANN board should handle advice from the Governmental Advisory Committee after the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority transition but expects to finalize revisions to several other recommendations this week, the working group’s leaders said Tuesday. CCWG-Accountability’s recommendation to allow the ICANN board to reject GAC advice on a two-thirds majority vote is one of several included in the working group’s draft proposal for changing ICANN’s accountability mechanisms. The draft GAC recommendation has been criticized by stakeholder groups, including the Generic Names Supporting Organization Council (see 1601260067). CCWG-Accountability is considering a possible compromise that would raise the ICANN board’s threshold for rejecting GAC advice to only a 60 percent majority, though it’s unclear how much support that proposal has among the working group’s members, an ICANN observer told us. CCWG-Accountability believes it will be able to distribute a supplemental draft of its proposal to all ICANN chartering organizations quickly enough to receive clearance from those organizations during ICANN's upcoming meeting in Marrakech, Morocco, working group leaders said in a blog post. “Keeping in mind the working methods for the various Supporting Organizations and Advisory Committees, we ask that this be [taken] into accountas the Chartering Organizations plan their discussions and schedules leading into and during” ICANN’s Marrakech meeting, CCWG-Accountability leaders said. “We encourage any Chartering Organizations that can deliberate and/or approve the Work Stream 1 Recommendations prior to Marrakech to do so.”
ICANN believes there's “only a LOW risk” that terrorist activity could occur during its March 5-10 meeting in Marrakech, Morocco, but ICANN is taking new security precautions for the meeting and all future ICANN meetings, said ICANN Vice President-Meetings and International Real Estate Operations Nick Tomasso in a blog post Wednesday. Tomasso cited recent terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, as the reason for the security changes. ICANN is “in constant and on-going communication with our hosts and the Moroccan government, to assess any security concerns surrounding the upcoming meeting,” Tomasso said. “We are working with a highly respected global security-consulting firm, which gives us on-going updates of potential risks. This firm has also assigned a senior level analyst to work with ICANN.” All delegates to ICANN meetings will now need a government-issued ID to pick up their badge at the registration desk, and there will be additional security screenings at ICANN meeting venues, including metal detectors and bag checks, Tomasso said. Moroccan authorities will do advanced verification of delegate registration information at the Marrakech meeting and security will be increased at hotels where meeting delegates are staying, Tomasso said.
The outcome of ICANN's ongoing planning for the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) transition will be a top Internet governance issue of 2016, said NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling during the State of the Net conference Monday. ICANN has said it's nearly ready to submit the IANA transition plan to NTIA for final approval, but ongoing disputes over an associated proposal for changing ICANN's accountability mechanisms continue to delay that process. “We're basically waiting on [the Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability (CCWG-Accountability)] to finish” its proposal before final submission can occur because the CCWG-Accountability proposal affects aspects of the IANA transition plan, said IANA Transition Coordination Group Chairwoman Alissa Cooper, a Cisco engineer. There's “a lot riding on” a successful conclusion to the IANA transition process, because it's one of the “largest multistakeholder Internet governance processes” undertaken, Strickling said. A successful IANA transition “will serve as a powerful example” of what multistakeholder processes can accomplish, he said.
ICANN said it’s extending the deadline to Jan. 28 for parties to submit proposals for an independent examiner to do ICANN’s periodic review of the At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC). The submission deadline was previously Friday. All ICANN advisory committees except the Governmental Advisory Committee, all supporting organizations and the ICANN Nominating Committee go through similar period reviews, ICANN said in a Friday news release. The independent examiner for the ALAC review will assess the extent of ALAC’s implementation of recommendations from the committee’s previous review, along with all components of ICANN’s At-Large Community. The review is to run from April through March 2017, ICANN said.