Good point
Bridge Builder raises a good point. Letting national authorities control the release of the flight data is not the ideal situation. The Tunisian ATR ditching is a good case in point. Prosecutors want to put a spin on the CVR tapes that many pilots felt was dead wrong. Having the tapes to listen to made a big difference in that case. Canada will not even allow the release of CVR transcripts, let alone the recordings themselves.
I know this is a hot button item but at some level I think ICAO should insist that the raw data be available to a wider audience.
20driver