The FTC approved a final order in a 5-0 vote that settles charges made against Snapchat, an application allowing users to share photos that disappear within seconds, said an agency news release Wednesday. The charges alleged Snapchat “deceived consumers with promises about the disappearing nature of messages sent through the service,” said the news release. In the order dated Dec. 23, the FTC ordered that Snapchat “shall not misrepresent in any manner, expressly or by implication, in or affecting commerce, the extent to which respondent or its products or services maintain and protect the privacy, security, or confidentiality of any covered information, including but not limited to: (1) the extent to which a message is deleted after being viewed by the recipient; (2) the extent to which respondent or its products or services are capable of detecting or notifying the sender when a recipient has captured a screenshot of, or otherwise saved, a message; (3) the categories of covered information collected; or (4) the steps taken to protect against misuse or unauthorized disclosure of covered information.” Snapchat also must create a “comprehensive privacy program” that takes into account risks and controls. A third-party professional will have to assess that program on a biennial basis, it said.

Sony’s decision to release The Interview​ on Christmas Eve for rental or purchase through Google Play, YouTube Movies and Xbox Live came a week after Sony began contacting “a number of companies, including Google, to ask if we’d be able to make their movie, 'The Interview,' available online,” said Google Chief Legal Officer David Drummond Wednesday in a blog post. “We'd had a similar thought and were eager to help -- though given everything that’s happened, the security implications were very much at the front of our minds,” Drummond said. “Of course it was tempting to hope that something else would happen to ensure this movie saw the light of day. But after discussing all the issues, Sony and Google agreed that we could not sit on the sidelines and allow a handful of people to determine the limits of free speech in another country (however silly the content might be)." Xbox Live also is offering the movie for sale and rental, Drummond said. It’s also available through a website Sony set up called seetheinterview.com. Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith wrote in a blog post Wednesday that his company made the decision to support Sony after “substantial thought.” Microsoft “decided to stand up with Sony and work with others to ensure that freedom of expression triumphs over cyberterrorism,” Smith wrote. Through Xbox Live, the movie is available to U.S. customers who own an Xbox console, a Windows Phone, or a PC or tablet running Windows 8 or 8.1, Smith said. Sony also is releasing the movie in select theaters nationally on Christmas Day. Sony Entertainment representatives didn't comment on why The Interview isn't being offered online through such Sony vehicles as the PlayStation Store.

High-level Internet governance officials agreed the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority transition should continue, but the issues on the NETMundial Initiative (NMI) need more work, in a meeting last week, an ICANN news release said Monday. The meeting’s participants included several ICANN board members, ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade, Internet Engineering Task Force Chairman Jari Arkko, Internet Society (ISOC) CEO Kathy Brown and Interactive Architecture Bureau Chairman Russ Housley, it said. ISOC refused to endorse the NETMundial Initiative’s Coordination Council in November (see 1411170031). Arkko and Housley want the initiative’s “structure defined after setting the terms of reference and scope of the work,” ICANN said. “More work needs to be done by NMI and with the various communities involved.”

The FTC should review Oracle’s agreement to buy Datalogix, a digital marketing service, Jeff Chester, Center for Digital Democracy executive director, said in a statement Monday. Oracle announced the proposed acquisition in a news release Monday. “Datalogix aggregates and provides insights on over $2 trillion in consumer spending from 1,500 data partners across 110 million households to provide purchase-based targeting and drive more sales,” Oracle said. The FTC “must examine” the proposed deal’s “impact on competition and also protect the privacy of Americans,” Chester said. In light of the FTC’s consent decree with Facebook, which works with Datalogix, the agency should decide whether that decree “requires additional safeguards,” he said. “The growing consolidation of information on every American and whatever we do … should trigger action, as well as soul searching by both policymakers and the public,” Chester said. Oracle and the FTC didn’t comment.

Google updated its transparency report site. The site is more interactive, includes additional information and allows Google to highlight statistics, Google said Monday in a blog post. The report provides "a lens on the things that governments and courts ask us to remove, underscoring the importance of transparency around the processes governing such requests," it said. From June 2013 to December 2013, Google received 3,105 government requests to remove 14,637 pieces of content, it said. That's a slight decrease from the first half of 2013 due to a spike in requests from Turkey during that period, activity "which has since returned to lower levels," it said.

Fifty-five percent of Internet stakeholders said “no” when asked whether an “accepted privacy-rights regime and infrastructure” would be created in the next decade, said a Pew Research Internet Project survey released Thursday. But 45 percent of respondents said “yes” when asked if such a regime would exist by 2025, it said. The survey polled 2,511 Internet industry officials, researchers and analysts, some of whom were anonymous. Elon University also participated in the survey, which was done from Nov. 25, 2013, to Jan. 13, 2014. “I do not think 10 years is long enough for policy makers to change the way they make policy to keep up with the rate of technological progress,” John Wilbanks, Sage Bionetworks chief commons officer, told Pew. “We have never had ubiquitous surveillance before, much less a form of ubiquitous surveillance that emerges primarily from voluntary (if market-obscured) choices,” he said: “Predicting how it shakes out is just fantasy.”

“One way to provide an effective check on the ICANN board's power is to create statutory members of ICANN with extensive authority over the board,” said Daniel Castro, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation senior analyst, in a Wednesday op-ed in The Hill. Castro cited a 2010 paper by Shawn Gunnarson of Kirton McConkie, pointing to a California law, under which ICANN operates, that requires nonprofits to have statutory members. “This authority could include removing board members, overturning board decisions,” among other provisions, said Castro. ICANN didn’t comment.

ICANN was hit by a data breach in November, believed to be a “spear phishing” attack, it said in a news release Wednesday. Emails were sent to ICANN staffers that appeared to come from the ICANN domain, it said. The attack compromised the email credentials of several staff members, ICANN said. The attack also breached ICANN’s centralized zone data system (CZDS), which contained names, email addresses, telephone numbers and other information of CZDS users, it said. ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee's members-only wiki page also was breached, it said. The nonprofit is continuing to investigate the attack.

Membership in the Open Interconnect Consortium is nearing four dozen companies with the addition of 15 members, the consortium said in a Wednesday announcement. Among the noteworthy new members are CableLabs, Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo. In addition, GE Software joined as the consortium’s newest "diamond" member and took a seat on the consortium board, the group said. Other board members are Cisco, Intel, MediaTek and Samsung. Diamond is the most elite of the organization's three membership tiers, the consortium’s bylaws say. To achieve diamond, a company must pay $350,000 in annual dues (vs. $75,000 for platinum, $10,000 for gold), and must be approved by a 75 percent vote of the board, the rules say. Diamond is the only tier that qualifies for a board seat, though platinum members may chair or participate in a working group, they say. The consortium was formed this summer to promote interoperability among the billions of connected devices expected to come online by 2020, by establishing a specification, an open source implementation and a certification program, first for smart home and office solutions (see 1407090068).

The Thread Group is expected to have product certification in place in the first half of 2015 for its IP-based low-power wireless networking protocol, the alliance said Tuesday. UL will manage the product certification process for Thread with support from Granite River Labs, which will work with UL to develop the “test harness” developers will use in building, testing and certifying Thread-enabled products. Recent high-profile additions to membership, now at 50 companies, include Energizer, Kwikset, PG&E and Whirlpool. Other Thread Group member companies are Atmel, California Eastern Laboratories, Inc., CamPoint, GainSpan, Granite River Labs, Grid Connect, Imagination Technologies, Insteon, Intellihot Green Technologies Inc., iOT Tech, Jasco, Keen Home, Kwikset, leakSMART, Linx Technologies, LUX Technology Group, Marvell Technology Group, Midea Group, Nanoleaf, Net2grid, Pacific Gas & Electric, Proximetry, Salto Systems, Sansa Security, Shenzhen Rakwireless Technology, Skyley Networks, Stack Lighting, Telegesis, TÜV Rheinland Group, Tyco, UL, WigWag and Zonefirst. Three tiers of membership to Thread are available: sponsor, contributor and affiliate, it said.