years to focus on what it is supposed to be doing. Yet it is still
fixated on imposing terms that are neither legally required in US and in
cases even illegal elsewhere.

People with no experience with large networks, which includes pretty much everyone on the ALAC, often seem to believe that collecting less information about domain registrants always improves the privacy of Internet users.  The reality is much more subtle.

The vast majority of users have never registered a domain and never will, so WHOIS doesn't affect them, while the vast majority of domains are registered for commercial purposes, and a dismaying number for criminal purposes.  A large registrar often turns off 10,000 domains a day for malware, phishing, and other malevolent behavior.

The WHOIS information that most of the waivers concern is very useful for identifying and dealing with criminals.  That is so even though a lot of it is faked, since the crooks tend to have patterns when they fake stuff. I'm not guessing about this, I talk to people every day at network operators who are protecting their users and law enforcement who are protecting their citizens.

Registrars should certainly comply with their national laws, and I agree that some of ICANN's rules are silly, e.g., when they grant a waiver, it should automatically apply to other registrars or registries in the same jurisdiction.  But when you make it harder to tell who's behind a domain, you're also making it easier for criminals to siphon the money out of your grandmother's bank account.  That may be a reasonable tradeoff, but it's a tradeoff and one that deserves better than the kneejerk reeactions we always see here.

R's,
John