ICANN has begun testing an authentication framework that would permit law enforcement agencies to request non-public WHOIS data when responding to urgent threats involving life safety, critical infrastructure, or child exploitation. The initiative, developed by an ICANN Input Group on Law Enforcement Agency Authentication Mechanisms, was presented during the organization’s annual meeting in Bali, Indonesia. The proposal aims to balance registrar privacy protections with legitimate investigative needs, particularly as GDPR and similar regulations have led to widespread redaction of WHOIS records. Domain registrars including Namecheap and Verisign have voiced support for the technical approach, which relies on Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) to verify agency identities before granting access to the Registration Data Request Service (RDRS). Requests would be routed to the relevant registrar, which would have up to 24 hours to respond, with a 72-hour window for complex cases. To prevent abuse, agencies would designate specific personnel authorized to submit requests, secured via tokens exchanged during SAML handshakes. ICANN also plans to address privacy concerns for law enforcement officers, whose identities might otherwise be exposed through public WHOIS queries. The system remains in technical development, with policy details to be finalized by dedicated governance groups.