and when you architect managing user privacy as a drawn-out process that won't even begin until another human responds in a completely manual engagement, i can immediately see the motivation of the above poster wanting administration to provide an answer without the response time being calculated in business days.

completely fair game to shortcut an outdated hostile process with your own hostility, not really an unexpected result (e.g.: web scraping VS using an inaccessible API). it's an unacceptable approach in a modern context.