The Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability's (CCWG-Accountability) consensus at ICANN's Dublin meeting last week on several important provisions in its proposed set of changes to ICANN's accountability mechanisms “marked an important step in developing a mechanism that will effectively empower business and other stakeholders to hold ICANN accountable,” said U.S. Council for International Business (USCIB) Vice President-Information and Communications Technology Policy Barbara Wanner in a news release Monday. “We have repeatedly said that accountability mechanisms must be in place before the IANA transition takes place.” CCWG-Accountability agreed in part to proceed with a sole designator model as its mechanism for enforcing proposed new ICANN community powers (see 1510220053). “What I think we can take away from this week is the wonderful and amazing way in which we have brought together in the same room people from different [stakeholder] groups to work in a collaborative manner -- and that makes a difference and brings progress,” said CCWG-Accountability co-Chairman Mathieu Weill in the USCIB news release.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and other privacy advocates opposed to encryption back doors have three days left to obtain the 100,000 signatures on their WhiteHouse.gov petition (see 1509300059) required to receive a White House response, EFF tweeted Monday. The petition had close to 97,700 by our deadline.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation will urge an appeals court to reject government attempts to block an appeal (see 1508050058) in Jewel v. NSA, “EFF’s long-running lawsuit battling unconstitutional mass surveillance of Internet and phone communications,” a news release said Monday. “Evidence from whistleblowers and the government itself confirms the Internet backbone spying, yet a district court judge ruled earlier this year that there wasn’t enough publicly available information to rule if the program is constitutional.” EFF appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The government argues the appeal is “premature and entwined with other issues that are still being litigated in the lower court,” but EFF Special Counsel Richard Wiebe will argue Wednesday that the “appeals court should reject the government’s delay tactics, and finally address whether backbone spying is legal and constitutional,” it said. The hearing begins at 2 p.m. PDT in Courtroom 1 at the 9th Circuit in Pasadena, California.

AOL completed its acquisition of end-to-end mobile platform Millennial Media (see 1509030062), it said in a news release Friday. AOL made a tender offer of $1.75 in cash per share of Millennial Media common stock, which expired at midnight Thursday, it said. At the expiration of the tender offer, nearly 115 million Millennial shares were validly tendered, or about 80.3 percent of its outstanding shares, said AOL, which completed the acquisition of the remaining eligible shares not acquired in the tender offer. Millennial Media is now an AOL subsidiary, AOL said. AOL itself has been bought by Verizon (see 1505120019).

The FTC extended the deadline for its decision on the proposed verifiable parental consent method that Riyo submitted for approval under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule (see 1508040025), an agency news release said Friday. The new deadline is Nov. 18, it said. The extension was made at the company’s request, and commissioners unanimously agreed, it said.

“After a second review of the European Court of Justice's (ECJ) judgment (see 1510060001), it will be very hard to come up with a solution that addresses all problems identified by the Court, given the U.S. position,” said Max Schrems, whose questions about the U.S. government’s access to his Facebook data prompted a review of safe harbor, in a post for the International Association of Privacy Professionals’ Privacy Perspectives blog Thursday. “While all issues brought up by the ECJ could be solved in theory, the U.S. government will very likely not be able or willing to limit surveillance laws to an extent that they comply with all requirements of the Charter of Fundamental Rights (CFR) in respect to the right to privacy,” Schrems said. “The attempt to enact a Judicial Redress Act and the proposed 'Umbrella Agreement' show that the two sides can only reach agreement for very limited safeguards, that are far from what the ECJ now requires.” A new agreement will have to include much stricter restrictions on businesses, Schrems said. U.S. businesses that comply with surveillance by U.S. authorities like the Prism program, which according to documents shared by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden include AOL, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, “may require serious reorganization,” Schrems said.

President Barack Obama and Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif “affirmed that international cooperation is essential to make cyberspace secure and stable,” the White House said Thursday. “Both leaders endorsed the consensus report of the 2015 UN Group of Governmental Experts in the Field of Information and Telecommunications in the Context of International Security.” Obama and Sharif also pledged to continue to engage and discuss on cyber issues as part of the U.S.-Pakistan Strategic Dialogue, it said.

Apple released several security updates to address critical vulnerabilities in multiple Apple products, a U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team alert said Wednesday. Updates are available for, among others, iTunes 12.3.1 for Windows 7 and later, Apple Watch, Apple Watch Sport, Apple Watch Hermes, iPhones 4s and later, iPod touch 5th generation and later, and iPad 2 and later, the alert said. Exploitation of the vulnerabilities may allow a remote attacker to take control of an affected system, it said.

The FTC and National Credit Union Administration will host a live Twitter chat to discuss cybersecurity tips and ways to protect information Thursday at 11 a.m., said FTC Consumer and Business Education Counsel Carol Kando-Pineda in a blog post Tuesday. “Join the conversation at #NCUAChat,” or submit questions beforehand to socialmedia@ncua.gov, Kando-Pineda said.

Operators of an alleged tech support scam agreed to settle allegations that they tricked consumers into paying millions of dollars for technical support services they didn't need and for software that was otherwise free, the FTC said in a news release Tuesday. The FTC filed suit against Pairsys and its owners, Tiya Bhattacharya and Uttam Saha. It alleged they cold-called consumers pretending to be representatives of Facebook or Microsoft, bought deceptive online advertisements that led consumers to believe they were a legitimate technical support company, and engaged in high-pressure sales pitches to consumers to give the company remote access to their computers allegedly to repair dangerous malware and viruses last year, the release said. “The scammers would then pressure consumers into paying for computer security or technical support services, usually at a cost of $149 to $249, though in some cases the defendants charged as much as $600.” Under the settlement, Bhattacharya and Saha “are required to turn over multiple real estate properties as well as the contents of numerous bank accounts, and to give up the leases on two luxury cars,” and are banned from selling any technical support services to consumers, participating in telemarketing, misrepresenting goods or services to consumers, and from collecting money for any technical support services, the release said. The commission vote approving the stipulated order was 5-0, it said. The order was filed in and entered by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York.