Dear Councilors,

In preparation for our upcoming Council meeting on 19 December, we kindly request your review of the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) proposal concerning urgent requests for domain name registration data. This topic has been included as a discussion point on the meeting agenda.

In their letter to the ICANN Board dated 15 October, the GAC proposes to expedite the resolution of the urgent requests matter while authentication mechanisms are being discussed. Specifically, they suggest, urgent request timeline discussions should proceed under the assumption that urgent requests received by registrars have been authenticated, while the PSWG should work simultaneously together with Contracted Parties to develop a scalable authentication process for Urgent Requests, initially focused on authenticating requests from law enforcement agencies.

During the trilateral meeting between representatives of the GAC, the ICANN Board, and the GNSO Council in November, Council committed to reviewing and discussing the GAC’s proposal during its meeting in December. The focus will be on:

Assessing whether the urgent request issue requires a new policy development process or can proceed within the existing implementation framework.

Addressing any unresolved questions, particularly regarding the feasibility of assuming urgent requests are authenticated to expedite policy work.

Please feel free to share any initial thoughts or questions in advance.

Thanks,

Greg