Far be it...
... from me, at least, to suggest (Ireland) that given the physical location of ICANN HQ, and given recent US legal pronouncements about government access to data held by US based (for varying definitions of 'based' (Ireland)) organisations, and given the physical location of a number of TLD and whois servers... well. Given those, far be it from me to suggest the US is quite happy with _its_ ability to get access to whois data, and more than happy not to spread that access to 'other governments'.
Riiiiiiight. I'm just unduly cynical, yes? Sigh...