If true, that is a vast departure from the way DL has always operated.

My bet is that is just the new party line which was adopted to seem to satisfy data privacy requirements of the EU. All the comments and facilities to add them (some but not all of which were computer generated) are probably still in place. I do believe however, that they have greatly restricted the population of agents who can add or even view this information. That way a GA or Res agent in Europe cannot accidentally see it, nor can a normal Res agent accidentally see it for a customer with a European address.