Facebook is “unlikely” to renew its membership in the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and Yelp withdrew, said spokespeople for the companies Wednesday. A Yelp spokesperson said the online review website pulled its membership several months ago. Facebook is evaluating whether to renew its membership and hasn’t made a final decision, said its spokesperson. “While we have tried to work within ALEC to bring that organization closer to our view on some key issues, it seems unlikely that we will make sufficient progress so we are not likely to renew our membership in 2015.” Earlier this week, Google said it was pulling its financial support from ALEC because of the organization’s denial of climate change (CD Sept 23 p15).

Google is pulling its financial support from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) because of the group’s denial of climate change, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said during a Monday interview on NPR’s The Diane Rehm Show (http://bit.ly/1mpFfMD). “The facts of climate change are not in question anymore,” he said. “Everyone understands climate change is occurring and the people who oppose it are really hurting our children and our grandchildren and making the world a much worse place. And so we should not be aligned with such people -- they're just, they're just literally lying.” Google shareholders had previously voted down a measure to disclose more information about Google’s funding for groups such as ALEC, which advocate for issues Google doesn’t actively support (CD May 16 p16). In a statement, Forecast the Facts, which supports advocates for the existence of climate change, said, “We hope Google will also take this opportunity review its over $699,000 in contributions since 2008 to another group that is ‘just literally lying’ -- climate change deniers in Congress."

Communications services company WPP is investing $25 million in ad tech provider AppNexus, it said in a Monday news release (http://bit.ly/1C5YoXv). The investment includes its ad server platform, WPP said, and “continues WPP’s strategy of investing in fast-growing sectors such as ad technology and programmatic media buying.” The company said the “AppNexus’ platform allows real time buying and selling of digital advertising for marketers, publishers and content providers and media investment management companies."

White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Michael Daniel urged the private sector Friday to “work as a community to strengthen our collective defenses to make it harder for those who wish to cause harm.” That collaboration includes differentiating between what the government can do and what the private sector can do to strengthen cybersecurity, he said in a blog post. That differentiation will help both sectors determine how to respond to cyberattacks and “from that understanding would flow the information requirements to take those actions, and it would define who needs to provide what kind of information to whom on what timeline,” Daniel said. The private sector can also collaborate with the Department of Homeland Security to build better networks “that can adapt rapidly based on the threat we jointly face,” he said. Daniel also encouraged the private sector to file comments with the National Institute of Standards and Technology on its use of the Cybersecurity Framework. Comments are due Oct. 10 (http://1.usa.gov/1C6cQyN).

Access to archived court documents must be fully restored, said the Electronic Frontier Foundation in a Tuesday blog post (http://bit.ly/1BMJJjX). The Administrative Office of the Courts (AO) recently removed historic documents for five federal courts -- including four federal appeals courts -- from PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) (http://1.usa.gov/1p64Ap4). Lawyers, think tanks, media outlets and nonprofits frequently access court records through PACER, a government-run, fee-based system, EFF said. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. sent a letter to AO last week, pressing the agency to restore access to the removed documents (http://bit.ly/1uTVpgx). “Senator Leahy’s letter implies something that really should be explicit: the removal of these historic documents should be seen as a blow to access to democracy,” EFF said. “That a PACER account is required to view court records is already an unacceptable obstruction of access to public information.” AO did not comment.

Internet Security Alliance President Larry Clinton praised White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Michael Daniel Tuesday for saying the U.S. needs to take a more economics-based approach to cybersecurity, but added that there hasn’t been “adequate” follow-through on President Barack Obama’s 2013 cybersecurity executive order. Daniel had said during a Billington cybersecurity event Tuesday that improving cybersecurity is difficult in the U.S. because people still don’t fully understand the economics and psychology of cybersecurity. Daniel said the U.S. has improved its cybersecurity through its implementation of the executive order, particularly via the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Cybersecurity Framework (CD Sept 17 p9 ). There’s “no evidence that using the Framework is cost effective and there has been no obvious work to develop the market incentives called for by the President,” Clinton said in a statement. “Without these critical pieces the simple existence of the Framework is unlikely to generate significantly improved cyber security.” A similar process to the one NIST used to develop the framework could be used to “address the economic issues surrounding use of the Framework, such as cost-effectiveness and incentives,” he said.

Google has had a 150 percent increase in government requests for user information since the company began publishing user data in 2009, excluding requests for information on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the National Security Letters, said a company blog post Monday (http://bit.ly/1q8D5fi). The increase “comes against a backdrop of ongoing revelations about government surveillance programs,” it said. “Despite these revelations, we have seen some countries expand their surveillance authorities in an attempt to reach service providers outside their borders,” said Google. The USA Freedom Act (S-2685) would “prevent the bulk collection of Internet metadata under various legal authorities, allow us to be more transparent about the volume, scope and type of national security demands that we receive, and would create stronger oversight and accountability mechanisms,” it said.

"Instead of [ICANN] giving America and the world the assurance” that the transition of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) will be “seamless and imperceptible, exactly the opposite is occurring,” said Horace Cooper, National Center for Public Policy Research adjunct fellow, in a Politix op-ed Sunday (http://bit.ly/Zn1590). Cooper likened ICANN’s having the final say in its accountability process to a fox guarding the henhouse (CD Aug 27 p). He also endorsed the 12 principles for the coordination of unique identifiers (http://bit.ly/1l7SD1P) released in July by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (CD July 29 p10). The organizations involved in the drafting of the principles haven’t yet decided to go public, said an ITIF spokesman. ITIF wasn’t involved in the drafting of the principles, he said. ICANN initiated a public comment period on its accountability process (http://bit.ly/1qA0RFZ) in light of concerns raised by the ICANN community (CD Sept 9 p8). The comment period ends Sept. 27.

Cable and telecom companies that provide Internet service invest the most in domestic capital expenditures of any industry in the U.S., said the Progressive Policy Institute in a report (http://bit.ly/1Bsazh5). As a result, PPI said policymakers should avoid “massively altering Internet regulations” by taking a Communications Act Title II net neutrality approach, in a news release Friday (http://bit.ly/1wil1EX). The top four ISPs invested a combined $46 billion -- more than any other industry, it said. AT&T, Comcast and Verizon ranked in the top 10 of companies investing in the U.S., said PPI.

Internet Governance Forum (IGF) stakeholders in Istanbul (CD Sept 8 p10; Sept 5 p9) made “clear” last week that NTIA’s transition of Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) should go “hand-in-hand” with ICANN’s accountability process, said Matthew Shears, Center for Democracy & Technology’s Global Internet Policy and Human Rights Project director, in a blog post Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1oxZbIB). Shears cited a statement by ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade at IGF that ICANN can’t be “'without the U.S. government [IANA] contract and without some activities to strengthen our accountability to the global interest and to all of you.'” IGF stakeholders said neither the transition, nor the accountability process, should be “rushed,” said Shears. Other stakeholders said the newly formed NETmundial Initiative (CD Aug 29 p4; Sept 2 p13) should be “more inclusive, transparent, and focused, and warned against duplicating or undermining existing efforts (such as the IGF),” he said. The CDT wants IGF to continue its work beyond 2015, as the UN considers its renewal, said Shears. “Across the world, others are also thoroughly dissatisfied with the current state of Internet governance -- yes, even with the IGF itself,” said Jeremy Malcolm, Electronic Frontier Foundation senior global policy analyst, in a blog post Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1AxgjDK). The “tangible results” of the IGF’s “knowledge exchange have been thin on the ground,” he said. “The result has been a recent flourishing of independent Internet governance initiatives, all presented with the earnest disclaimer that they do not intend to duplicate the IGF -- but which nevertheless address areas well within the scope of the IGF’s original mandate.”