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.”

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.”

The FBI, which did a 2015 sting into the child porn website called Playpen, hacked thousands of devices, most of which were located outside the U.S., using a search warrant that illegally permitted extraterritorial searches and seizures, said UK-based Privacy International (PI), which filed an amicus brief Friday with the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston. The privacy group said in U.S. v. Alex Levin that hacking computers outside the U.S. has "profound foreign relations implications" because the government didn't get the consent of other countries. PI Legal Officer Scarlet Kim said in a news release that the extraterritorial searches raise important questions: "How will other countries react to the FBI hacking in their jurisdictions without prior consent? Would the U.S. welcome hacking operations on a similar scale carried out on U.S. residents by other countries? Is the FBI violating the laws of foreign jurisdictions by hacking devices located in them?" In the amicus filing, PI said the FBI hacked more than 8,700 computers, over 83 percent outside the U.S., in 120 countries and territories. The group also said the law enforcement agency used "vague and imprecise language" to describe the "network investigative technique" (NIT) as a "tracking device" but which PI and many other privacy advocates maintain is a euphemism for malware. At the time, PI said Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure largely prohibited such extraterritorial searches and NIT uses. The rule has since been changed to allow a single magistrate judge to issue one warrant that permits searches outside the judge's jurisdiction, which critics say has vastly expanded the government's hacking authority (see 1612140051). The Levin case arises out of the hacking operation of the Playpen child porn site (see 1610250049). Levin, a Massachusetts resident, is one of the defendants in the case and challenged the FBI's use of the search warrant, which was granted by a magistrate judge in the Eastern District of Virginia. A district judge then granted Levin's motion to suppress evidence because he argued the NIT warrant was invalid since it was obtained outside of his state. The case was then appealed to the 1st Circuit. DOJ didn't comment.

ICANN said it's “free to proceed” with delegating the .africa generic top-level domain to the ZA Central Registry after the California Superior Court threw out DotConnectAfrica Trust’s lawsuit to block the delegation from proceeding. DCA Trust had sought to require ICANN to follow the terms of independent review process proceedings that found ICANN mishandled DCA's 2013 challenge to the nonprofit's .africa delegation decision. DCA Trust also wanted ICANN to reconsider the registry's application to be the .africa registry (see 1603070062 and 1603280050). The California court cited the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles’ dismissal in December of a lawsuit that Donuts’ Ruby Glen subsidiary filed against ICANN over the controversial auction of the .web generic top-level domain, in which Judge Percy Anderson ruled that the anti-lawsuit covenant that ICANN includes in all gTLD applications is enforceable. That same covenant bars DCA Trust from suing ICANN on claims of fraud and unfair business practices, the California Superior Court ruled Thursday. ICANN said it “will now follow its normal processes towards delegation” of the .africa gTLD. DCA Trust didn’t comment Friday.

The Domain Name Association made recommendations Wednesday on online security abuse, child abuse mitigation, complaint handling from illegal online pharmacies and copyright infringement. The recommendations are part of DNA’s Healthy Domains Initiative, which is aimed at helping domain name registries and registrars maintain the domain name system’s security and stability, the industry group said. The guidance on copyright infringement includes support for creating a voluntary third-party mechanism akin to ICANN’s trademark-centric uniform dispute resolution policy that would address copyright infringement through the use of domain names, DNA said. The industry group recommended registries and registrars design a formalized system for handling imagery related to child abuse and establish “trusted notifier” relationships with child protection authorities. DNA’s best practices for addressing DNS abuse focus on risk minimization and mitigation.

President Donald Trump's constant tweeting to his more than 24 million Twitter followers is not only helping drive users to the social media platform, but consumers' real-time reactions are "driving engagement higher," BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield wrote investors Wednesday. He said the social media site's user growth and engagement -- through device downloads and daily usage -- has been due, in part, to the presidential election. Greenfield likened Trump's tweeting to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's fireside chats on the radio. Whereas listeners then could only write a letter or offer views one-to-one, "Twitter creates a relatively frictionless way for people to share their views and create an on-going dialogue with other consumers around the globe," he said. Trump is "giving people a reason to be actively engaged" rather than passively using the site as an RSS news reader, he added. "What makes Trump’s use of Twitter different is the 'importance' of the content he is putting on Twitter," wrote the analyst. "Trump is paving the way for other public figures to be more forthcoming on Twitter and much more importantly, as a place for consumers to look and react to those messages." This and the company's efforts to curb trolling and hate speech (see 1702070037) might make Twitter more appealing for a takeover over the next year, said Greenfield.

Facebook is unveiling a feature that helps people provide assistance to and communicate with others immediately after a crisis, wrote Naomi Gleit, vice president-social good, in a Wednesday blog post. The "community help" function is an update to the company's "safety check" feature, which was launched in 2014 and lets users tell friends and family they're all right after a crisis, she said. Called Community Help, the feature is being launched in Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia and the U.S. for the first couple of weeks for natural and accidental incidents before it's made more widely available and for more types of incidents, she said. In a separate blog post, Facebook said it updated policies, resources and tools to better enforce rules against discriminatory advertising on its site after the company was criticized last year for permitting advertisers to potentially discriminate against users by race. "We make it clear that advertisers may not discriminate against people based on personal attributes such as race, ethnicity, color, national origin, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, family status, disability, medical or genetic condition," it said. The company said it created a new section that provides more information on anti-discrimination policy and educational resources from agencies and civil rights groups that specialize in fighting such discrimination. Facebook is also testing machine learning technology to spot credit opportunity, employment and housing ads -- "the types of advertising stakeholders told us they were concerned about" -- by "disapproving" them and providing the updated policy.

A lack of racial diversity within technology companies could hurt their financial performance, Open MIC reported Wednesday. It said tech companies in the top 10 percent of racial and ethnic diversity are about two-thirds more likely to produce more revenue than those in the bottom 10 percent. "Similarly, companies that lack racial/ethnic diversity are about 20% more likely to fall short of median operating margins," said the nonprofit. “Given the growing social, political and economic influence of tech companies, the lack of diversity in the sector has implications that extend far beyond the industry itself,” said Executive Director Michael Connor in a news release. The report recommended tech companies measure their progress by collecting and disclosing data on race and gender, such as employees' functions, seniority, tenure, status, salary and other information. "Tech companies such as Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft have begun to disclose employee salaries, broken down by gender and sometimes but not always by race," the report said. Another recommendation is linking "time-bound goals" such as hiring and advancing women and minorities within organizations to leaders who are responsible for hitting those targets. Last year, Microsoft said it would tie executive bonuses to workforce diversity goals, and Pandora said it plans to increase percentage of U.S. employees of color to 45 percent by 2020, up from 35 percent, the report said. Open MIC said white executives, who hold a disproportionate power in tech companies, need to be fully committed to improving diversity and inclusion or those efforts will fall short.

Verisign lost its appeal Wednesday to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals of District Judge Claude Hilton’s 2015 dismissal of the domain name registry’s false advertising lawsuit against registry XYZ. Verisign claimed XYZ violated the Lanham Act by claiming entities couldn't get desired .com domain names from Verisign, and that XYZ’s .xyz top-level domain was “the next .com.” Hilton dismissed the lawsuit in the Alexandria, Va., court, saying XYZ’s statements about its rising registration numbers were “verifiably true." When XYZ “stated they were a market leader in new TLD’s and that they had the most new registrations than any other TLD, they were basing that information off of an accurate zone file,” Hilton said in his ruling (in Pacer). A three-member 4th Circuit panel affirmed Hilton’s ruling Wednesday. Verisign’s analysis of XYZ’s claims “suffers from what we have identified as a ‘fatal flaw’ in calculating Lanham Act damages: It assumes rather than demonstrates that every .xyz registration during the relevant time period was the result of XYZ’s allegedly false statements,” said Judge Pamela Harris for the three-member panel. Judges Henry Floyd and James Wynn joined Harris in affirming the district court ruling. XYZ’s claims about the availability of .com domain names couldn’t be considered false or misleading under the Lanham Act, the 4th Circuit ruled. “XYZ’s statements concerning the availability of desirable .com names constitute opinion or puffery, not statements of fact on which reasonable consumers could rely,” the court said. “XYZ’s YouTube video claim that it is ‘impossible to find the domain name that you want’ … we conclude, cannot be interpreted as a verifiable statement of objective fact.” Verisign and XYZ didn’t immediately comment.

Total global spending on IoT “endpoints and services” will reach almost $2 trillion in 2017, Gartner reported Tuesday. It forecasts 8.4 billion connected things will be in use worldwide in 2017, up 31 percent from 2016, and will reach 20.4 billion by 2020. The consumer segment will be the largest user of connected things, with 5.2 billion units in 2017, or 63 percent of the overall number of applications in use, Gartner said. "Aside from automotive systems, the applications that will be most in use by consumers will be smart TVs and digital set-top boxes, while smart electric meters and commercial security cameras will be most in use by businesses."