[wlonkly]

I think it was more of an intentional tradeoff, as one of the many goals of CT logs was to allow domain owners to discover certificates issued for their domains, or more generally for any interested party to audit the activity of a certificate authority.

What you're describing there is certificate... translucency, I guess?

[adolph]

Yes, "translucent database" was exactly the concept I thought of when asking the question. The concept is keep access to specific items easy but accessing the entire thing as a whole more costly.