[pc86]

Perhaps a uniquely American opinion, but employees can opt out quickly and easily by not getting paid by public funds. Most public sector jobs have private sector equivalents. If you want to help people find jobs and your privacy is important enough to make public sector work untenable, get a job with one of the private sector organizations that does that.

> elected officials...have to expose their street address to get elected. This generates real risk.

Is there an epidemic of local German politicians being harassed and assaulted at their homes?

I can think of no reason why constituents should not know where the people in power over them live. Elected officials should not be able to hide from their constituents.

[forgetfreeman]

Making it slightly more involved for randos to show up at your literal doorstep hardly seems like hiding from one's constituency.

[anonymous908213]

> I can think of no reason why constituents should not know where the people in power over them live.

I can think of plenty of reasons. Political violence in democracies is on the rise globally, and not the sort of organized political violence that people might use to liberate themselves from the chains of oppressors, but rather the kind of lunatic political violence that is committed by irrational lone actors who are fundamentally mentally unwell.

I believe you can have political transparency without involving people's homes and families.

[direwolf20]

When an overworked air traffic controller in Germany gave a plane an instruction that happened to be the opposite of TCAS automatic collision avoidance system, and one pilot followed TCAS to avoid a collision and one followed the controller, the planes crashed and everybody died. A family member of one of the passengers looked up, hunted down, and murdered in cold blood the air traffic controller.

[krisoft]

> an overworked air traffic controller in Germany

Actually the air traffic controller in question was Swiss not German.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_%C3%9Cberlingen_mid-air_c...

[fc417fc802]

You left out - was a foreigner, managed to escape, faced zero consequences at home (AFAIK).

[phainopepla2]

He didn't escape, he sentence was reduced from 8 to 3 1/2 by a Swiss judge. The reasoning was that his mental state was properly accounted for. Who knows if lobbying from Russia played a part in that. Also, not only did he face no consequences at home, he was celebrated and given a high-level job.

Maybe it's my American-ness showing, but it's pretty shocking to me that 8 years was considered too harsh for someone who stabbed a man to death in front of his family.

On the other hand, I suppose one could argue that the perpetrator was highly unlikely to commit a similar act in the future, if only because his motivation was the death of his own family, who would no longer be around to inspire him to violence a second time.

[pc86]

Until some other nefarious air traffic controller waits for him to remarry and have another family.

[whattheheckheck]

Its literally the last check of power... rich people will find out exactly where the power people live. The masses also need to know

[anonymous908213]

The last check on power is murdering politicians in their homes? I beg to differ. If the situation is so bad that violence is truly necessary, the last check is an organized revolution, not an assassination. If the figure is a genuine dictator and important enough to have real power, they would have extensive security surrounding their home anyways. This fantasy of assassinating a would-be Putin or whatever does not justify exposing the addresses of city councilmen or judges or whatever random public servant somebody wants to kill over their grievances.

[autoexec]

> The last check on power is murdering politicians in their homes?

You said murder, but there are plenty of valid reasons that the public should know who holds positions of power and where they live that don't involve violence of any kind.

Protest is an essential freedom we have and it's perfectly valid to do it outside of the homes of those we have put in power. It's also useful to have that information when investigating fraud and corruption.

[anonymous908213]

I don't think there is any reason to protest outside people's personal residences. People can protest at a government building, or a public square, or somewhere intentionally disruptive that isn't implicitly aimed at intimidating a public servant. Especially given that protests can turn violent, having a mob outside a specific individual's house is reckless and can quickly escalate in the wrong way. I think it's worth noting that the people protesting won't always be people you agree with. People protest both sides of a given cause. Perhaps you think it is justified to form an intimidation mob for your cause, but would you feel the same way about the opposing side of the issue doing the same? For a civil society to flourish, I think there needs to be a common understanding that there are limits to how people should conduct themselves.

> It's also useful to have that information when investigating fraud and corruption.

This is the purview of journalists, police, and independent investigative boards. We do not need random unqualified people stalking politicians to uncover fraud. I'm not sure I've ever heard of a case where that a random nobody ended up uncovering fraud or corruption by stalking, but I have heard of dozens of cases of public servants being targeted and murdered in their homes.

[autoexec]

> I don't think there is any reason to protest outside people's personal residences. People can protest at a government building, or a public square, or somewhere intentionally disruptive that isn't implicitly aimed at intimidating a public servant.

All protest is aimed at intimidating someone. Free-speech zones aren't going to make anything better. I'd absolutely support anyone protesting something I agree with (or protesting for something I don't) and can't imagine that limiting people's right to protest or increasing the ability of government to hide from the public would be good for anyone except corrupt or incompetent government officials.

> This is the purview of journalists, police, and independent investigative boards.

There are no special rights given to "journalists" that aren't already given to all people. Journalists are just regular people and everyone has the freedom of the press. This matters more than ever today considering that our mass media is captured by political interests and controlled by an increasingly small number of rich people. We need independent journalists to be free to do their work. We absolutely need random "unqualified" people "stalking" politicians to uncover fraud. (where "unqualified" means independent, and "stalking" just means evidence gathering through recording or public records requests). There are countless of examples of "random nobodies" uncovering fraud or corruption. Some of them are doing it by carrying out long drawn out investigations over many months where they gather and review documents and conduct interviews, while others are doing it in a matter of seconds with nothing more than a cell phone recording posted to the internet. Some of those people uncovering and reporting corruption are people I'd generally disagree with politically, but I'll still support what they're doing because it's a critical function of a free nation.

As for police, there's a lot of problems with government investigating themselves and their friends. Independent investigative boards can be helpful but they too are best when they're just regular people.

There are extremely few public servants being assassinated in their homes. There are far more cases of public servants killing innocent people.

[cucumber3732842]

Are there more lunatics or has the number of lunatics remained unchanged but the frequency of situations and events and availability of information and events that make them act increased?

It's not like there's a control earth to compare to.

[pc86]

Government employees, including and especially elected officials, are employees of the people and the people have a right to the same information any employer has about their employees.

> Political violence in democracies is on the rise globally

Citation needed, but even if we say for the sake of argument this is accurate, that doesn't naturally lead to this outcome.

What makes violence political?

Is political violence inherently worse? I think it is, but there's at least an argument to be made that it isn't.

Is stopping that political violence worth the worst case scenario where we make it harder for the public to get this type of information?

[16bitvoid]

I'd argue that employers shouldn't have access to employee's home addresses either, outside of situations where it's needed (e.g., employee chooses to get paycheck by mail instead of direct deposit). Most employers keep access to personal employee information (PII) restricted to HR/timekeeping/payroll departments anyway.

Why would my direct supervisor need my home address?

[fc417fc802]

To match more closely the question about politicians, why would you need the home address of your direct supervisor? Seems quite suspect to me.

[anonymous908213]

> Government employees, including and especially elected officials, are employees of the people and the people have a right to the same information any employer has about their employees.

I don't think any employer has any right to know their employee's home address, to be honest.

> Is political violence inherently worse? I think it is, but there's at least an argument to be made that it isn't.

I think this question is rather besides the point. Random acts of violence are bad, so let's not make anybody's home address public information. In the age of the internet, we routinely observe millions of people fixating on one person for some perceived grievance or another, wherein it only takes one lunatic among those millions having access to private information to result in a tragedy. We don't have to make it so easy for these tragedies to happen.

[pc86]

> I don't think any employer has any right to know their employee's home address, to be honest.

Regardless of whether this should be the case or not, it is the case is every country I can think of.

I agree I think we're straying from the point a bit. When is the last time you can point to an act of political violence that would not have occurred had some public servant or elected official's address not been on a website or spreadsheet somewhere?

These things simply don't happen enough to warrant further limiting government officials' accountability to the public.

[anonymous908213]

> Regardless of whether this should be the case or not, it is the case is every country I can think of.

And we are specifically talking about advocacy for legislation to change that. The report advocates for changing legislation to benefit government employees as a privileged class, while I think the common-sense position is to ensure the privacy of every citizen.

> When is the last time you can point to an act of political violence that would not have occurred had some public servant or elected official's address not been on a website or spreadsheet somewhere?

These attacks happen often, but a particularly notable case was that in the US, June 2025, where a mentally unhinged terrorist assassinated two public servants in their home, shot two others in another home (although they survived), and had a hitlist of other legislators' homes to target, although he was stopped before he could continue his spree. In fact he had stopped by four homes in total, but by chance the occupants were gone from one and the police were already checking in on another and he left without acting there. This was a tragedy that could only have happened in the way it did because of home addresses being so freely available, and it was pure luck that the tragedy was not even worse than it happened to be.

> These things simply don't happen enough to warrant further limiting government officials' accountability to the public.

What accountability to the public is meaningfully gained by letting people attack your home? "Random people going to legislators' doorsteps" is not a legitimate part of the democratic process of any country I'm familiar with.

[dTal]

Setting aside "elected officials"... government employees are already undercompensated compared to the private sector, making it difficult to attract talent. Eroding their personal rights and exposing them to personal risk on top of that is a recipe for shrinking the government to nothing. Do that and you might as well cut to the chase and hand the whole kit and kaboodle over to the private sector and be done with it.