The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, governs the system that translates common Web site addresses into strings of numbers understood by computers.

Testimony prepared for a Senate committee hearing Wednesday, and obtained by The Associated Press, says the Commerce Department has not taken a strong enough role in overseeing the company.

The department's public comments have been "general in nature and infrequent," and there were no detailed minutes of meetings between the company and federal officials, according to remarks prepared by the General Accounting Office, the investigative branch of Congress, for the Senate Commerce subcommittee on science and technology.

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