Larry Dighera wrote:
Would it have been possible for Congress to have caused this data to
be made public if NASA had been privatized and the study conducted by
the private corporation contracted to fulfill NASA's role?

Yes. But future "studies" will probably be a lot less meaningful now.
You can bet the farm that many airline pilots will think twice about
providing any information if it is releasable, even with the obvious
personal info deleted. Look at how fast it was determined, for example,
that Frontier Airlines was the only airline flying red-eye flights
Denver to Baltimore on A319s.