ICANN indicated it would “slow down and listen” to concerns about its accountability process, without committing to a public comment period on the process, at an Internet Governance Forum session Tuesday (CD Sept 2 p13), emailed IGF attendee and NetChoice Executive Director Steve DelBianco. ICANN received a letter Aug. 26 from its major constituencies and shareholder groups questioning its accountability process released Aug. 14 (http://bit.ly/1vdRn3j) (CD Aug 28 p14). ICANN board Chairman Steve Crocker wants to “get moving on the substance of accountability mechanisms,” but was “dismissive about concerns over process, and suggested that ICANN already has plenty of accountability mechanisms,” said DelBianco. NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling “advised us to keep a narrow scope of accountability topics,” DelBianco said. Strickling wants “to keep [accountability] simple,” so as to expedite the transition of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, said DelBianco. “Many of us want a broad scope of accountability issues, because we see this as our last best hope to get mechanisms that will force ICANN’s board and management to be accountable to the community -- not just to the ICANN corporation.” Strickling, ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade and Christopher Painter, the State Department’s cyberissues coordinator, reaffirmed their commitment to the multistakeholder approach at a high-level meeting Monday at the Istanbul event (http://bit.ly/1nSOlwp). Painter was speaking on behalf of Catherine Novelli, State Department undersecretary for economic growth.

Mozilla is still working on a patch to block third-party cookies in its Firefox browser, Senior Vice President-Business and Legal Affairs Denelle Dixon-Thayer told us by email. “Advertising practices such as commercial tracking that are non-transparent and ignore user signals like Do Not Track are not sustainable for a healthy Web economy over the long term.” Advertising officials told us last week that browsers blocking third-party cookies had once been a No. 1 concern, but they're not currently worried about the cookies’ imminent downfall (CD Sept 2 p9). In 2013, Mozilla expressed plans to block third-party cookies, but the company has yet to do so. Dixon-Thayer said Mozilla delayed its cookie-blocking plans because the patch wasn’t robust enough. “Mozilla has been testing a patch that blocks many third-party cookies in our Aurora build of Firefox, and determined that it does not offer the level of tracking protection that users would expect,” she said. “We have been exploring additional solutions and plan to test new initiatives to give users more control over the flow of their data.”

Microsoft won’t turn over emails from its Ireland data center, a spokesman said Tuesday by email, despite a federal judge’s late Friday ruling to lift the freeze on the government’s search warrant (http://on.wsj.com/1A28ndE) (case No. 13-mj-02814). The U.S. District Court in New York ruled in July that Microsoft must provide U.S. law enforcement with emails, even though they were stored overseas. Microsoft had in June challenged a federal judge’s order to turn over the customer’s data (http://wapo.st/UFFjLs). Microsoft said it will appeal the decision. “Everyone agrees this case can and will proceed to the appeals court,” a spokesman said. “This is simply about finding the appropriate procedure for that to happen."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation criticized the NETmundial initiative (CD Aug 28 p4) for its lack of transparency and its association with the World Economic Forum, Jeremy Malcolm, EFF senior global policy analyst, said in a blog post Thursday (http://bit.ly/1rE36du). The EFF was invited to participate in the initiative, he said. The initiatives’ participants and steering committee members were “hand-picked by the organizers rather than being nominated by their own stakeholder groups (as, ironically, the NETmundial Principles set out as a best practice),” he said. Malcolm said civil society groups were accused of being “exclusive and elitist” for raising such concerns. EFF and others are “entitled to object to what is essentially a pre-cooked, big business initiative (well intentioned as it may be) from co-opting the name of an overtly more inclusive and grassroots-directed Internet governance meeting,” he said. The initiative won’t do “any harm, but initial indications suggest it is far from an ideal model of global Internet governance in action,” Malcolm said.

ICANN secured a new 90-minute session on its accountability process (CD Aug 27 p9) at the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) Tuesday in Istanbul (http://bit.ly/1vCQzsu) (CD Aug 28 p4), said an ICANN news release Friday (http://bit.ly/1rEMimR). ICANN received a letter Aug. 26 from its major constituencies and shareholder groups questioning its accountability process released Aug. 14 (http://bit.ly/1vdRn3j) (CD Aug 28 p14). The ICANN community is “very passionate about every detail” of all ICANN’s processes, and ICANN plans to discuss the accountability process with concerned stakeholders at IGF, said Baher Esmat, ICANN vice president-Middle East stakeholder engagement, in an interview last week. The transition of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority to ICANN and its accompanying accountability process will be discussed in a Friday session at IGF (http://bit.ly/1nh17YM), although Esmat expected both issues to be raised throughout the week, he said. ICANN also plans to express support for the IGF, as the UN continues its review of the World Summit on the Information Society that produced IGF, he said. Candidate submissions for the seven advisers within the Public Experts Group of ICANN’s accountability process are due Sept. 10, said an ICANN new release Thursday (http://bit.ly/1mZr3EP). The Council of Europe will present at the IGF a report (http://bit.ly/1r6MJEN) that found that ICANN’s “current rules for new gTLDs do not fully comply with freedom of expression and privacy standards and contains recommendations on how to address this,” the council said in a news release Friday. The council plans to address a range of human rights issues at IGF, including cybersecurity and privacy rights, it said.

Google expanded its Open Patent Non-Assertion (OPN) Pledge Tuesday, committing to not sue users, distributors or open-source developers over patent infringement for “patents related to technologies that help deliver fast, secure experiences on the web, including encryption, XML parsing and prefetching,” it said in a Tuesday night blog post (http://bit.ly/1tcqD5d). Google said it’s adding 152 patents to its pledge, initially made over a year ago (http://bit.ly/1tcqKOe).

The Department of Health and Human Services said Timothy DeFoggi, convicted Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Omaha on multiple child pornography charges, worked at the agency from 2008 until January. DeFoggi was a supervisory IT specialist for the Indian Health Service from September 2008 until March 2012, when he became lead IT specialist for HHS’s Office of the Assistant Secretary for Administration, HHS said. The Department of Justice said DeFoggi was a registered member of at least one of a set of three child porn websites that the FBI shuttered in December 2012. HHS didn’t comment on DeFoggi beyond disclosing Tuesday night his employment history at the department.

ICANN confirmed it received a letter Tuesday from its major constituencies and stakeholder groups questioning ICANN’s accountability process (CD Aug 27 p9). ICANN released its accountability process Aug. 14 (http://bit.ly/1vdRn3j), but it was “announced without a corresponding public comment period,” said the letter, saying “substantial questions and concerns remain unanswered” about the process. The letter writers plan to submit a list of clarifying questions within seven days, it said. The letter was signed by 12 ICANN constituency representatives, including Heather Dryden, Governmental Advisory Committee chair; Patrik Fältström, Security and Stability Advisory Committee chair; Michele Neylon, Registrar Stakeholder Group chair; Byron Holland, Country Code Names Supporting Organization chair; Olivier Crépin-LeBlond, At-Large Advisory Committee chair; and Elisa Cooper, Commercial Stakeholder Group executive committee member.

Human Rights Campaign asked House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, to investigate alleged “transphobic” edits by someone from an anonymous House IP address to the Wikipedia site for Netflix series Orange is the New Black, said Jeff Krehely, HRC vice president, in a blog post Friday (http://bit.ly/1q1qRJM). A remark on Wikipedia about one of the show’s actresses, Laverne Cox, a transgender woman, was edited to read that she is a “'real man pretending to be a woman,'” it said. Wikipedia temporarily banned the anonymous House IP address from editing Wikipedia for one month Wednesday, said news reports. “When more and more Americans are recognizing and upholding the rights and dignity of transgender Americans, it is an unwelcome reminder of how much work remains to be done,” said Krehely. Boehner didn’t comment.

Businesses of all sizes need to “proactively check for possible Point of Sale (PoS) malware infections,” particularly the bug known as “Backoff” malware, said a joint advisory Friday from the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Secret Service. Backoff was identified in October 2013, but wasn’t recognized by antivirus software until this month, it said. The advisory estimated Backoff has affected more than 1,000 businesses, many of which don’t know they've been compromised, it said. Seven PoS providers have confirmed that their clients have been affected, it said.