Asking the wrong question IMO. Even if the "follow-through" happens at a higher rate that doesn't necessarily influence whether this data should be hidden or not. You have to look at why the data is public in the first place - "I pay this person's salary, so I am entitled to know how much their salary is (among other things you typically know about an employee)."
Whether or not violence committed against public servants happens at a higher rate than the private citizenry doesn't impact the truthfulness of that statement. So if the article wants to make a coherent argument for hiding this type of information about public servants from the public, it needs to attack that point.
Why should paying you entitle me to know your home address? Paying you entitles me to some amount of your labor. I don't see why there should be anything else to it.
In practical terms businesses are required to collect employee PII in order to comply with various regulations. But that's not "entitled" that's "government imposed for unrelated reasons". (Those unrelated reasons being illegal aliens and tax compliance.)
There's also an element of risk management with the employer wanting to run a background check. But there's no particular reason that can't be done via a mutually trusted third party, similar to escrow. In fact it often is done that way in the residential rental business - the applicant authorizes the check and pays the third party who then furnishes the report to the landlord.
Maybe you can argue that a private employer shouldn't be allowed to know their employee's addresses but it's mostly irrelevant because things like tax laws require them to.
It also has nothing to do with public employees which are completely different because we have the right to know that data about government employees. It allows us to protest outside of their homes. It allows us to investigate them for corruption and fraud. It allows us to enforce laws that require residency in order to hold certain positions. An open/transparent government means no secret employees allowed.
Why does that involve a home address? That sounds like stalking to me. I'm fairly certain that's explicitly illegal in any reasonable justification.
> enforce laws that require residency in order to hold certain positions.
Again, stalking. What are you going to do, stake the address out? If fraud regarding residency is suspected it can be investigated via official channels.
> An open/transparent government means no secret employees allowed.
Can't say I agree. Can't say I see "private home address" as equivalent to "secret employee".
Although it could, home addresses were just one example of personal data that Justin Sherman seems to want to have redacted in public records. Good luck getting anything useful out of an investigation without them. Imagine submitting a public records request and having all the information about the government workers involved redacted. A list of phone calls being made and received, but all the numbers blacked out. A bunch of emails with all the email and IP addresses scrubbed.
We've already got armed government employees wearing masks to hide their identity as they murder people in the streets, we don't need more laws limiting the ability of the public to know who government workers are or preventing them from being investigated. If someone doesn't want people to easily be able to look up basic information about them like their name, address, salary, position, hire date, etc. the solution is to stop accepting taxpayer money and work for the private sector. Civil servants should expect members of the public will have the ability to see those types of things.
Honestly, this take sounds extremely naive. Most public employees have no authority and certainly aren't roaming the streets with guns roughing people up. They're doing office work. And you know who takes up an outsized share of their time? Completely unhinged members of the public, who can't be told to "go away" like they could at any other job, because the government must serve everyone, by law, no matter how kooky they are. You shouldn't be signing up to be easily harassed and threatened in your personal life just by taking a public sector job. See my other comment for some examples.
Whether or not violence committed against public servants happens at a higher rate than the private citizenry doesn't impact the truthfulness of that statement. So if the article wants to make a coherent argument for hiding this type of information about public servants from the public, it needs to attack that point.