Thanks Alan and others for your hard work on this.
To state it simply, it is not about what the ICANN community would _like_ to achieve, it is what the community is _able_ to achieve in the real world. The fact gathering about the legal context applying to privacy is paramount in this context. It rated pretty low in the list, so it will most probably not be studied. Too bad, because we may end up with ICANN policies that some registrars may not be able to abide to, due to their local legal requirements, in effect distorting the market in favour of those registrars located in countries where there are little or no privacy laws.
Patrick I disagree. Though many countries have privacy protections not provided by the USA, I suspect that those countries will allow disclosure when a party agrees to that disclosure, by contract.