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Comment by kbos87 | Hacker News Reader

Not even a passing mention of the privacy questions at stake here. I don’t fault the police for seeking answers, but every self-nominated amateur sleuth isn’t due an answer about the identity of someone who in all likelihood wanted to live privately and never committed a crime.

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In any context I can think of privacy only exists while someone is alive. Once you are dead your life history sort of exists in the public domain.

Except that the privacy of a bunch of “suspects” is also being broken, who are definitely still alive.

What about respect for the dead? I for one would like to live in a society that tries to honor my last wishes.

Circle it back around. There are no last wishes here.

It is not reasonable to assume that this person's family does not want to be informed of his passing.

Tell that to Scotland Yard, who have pledged to never publish the Jack The Ripper files. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2011-sep-20-la-fg-br...

What if he has a will and trust that need to be executed?

If that was important to him, he surely would have carried an ID.

Unless he didn't suspect he'd die?

Is finding out who this man was a privacy issue?

On his hike he was anonymous as far as his real name goes, but he shared some things with people, and I'm not convinced we know that we know what his wishes were as far as his death goes, if any family would ever hear of it, etc.

That could give some peace to their beloved ones, and nothing can harm him anymore. It seems that he has tell to be a divorced; maybe he has children. I think that is a fair move.

Is there no an index of "unrecognized dead people" that can be matched to a list of "people seeking to find disappeared lost one"? I would imagine if a loved one asks for them, providing pictures, the authorities could the said matching?

Uh, we don't know for sure he didn't ever commit a crime, your logic is flawed.

The point is there is no evidence of a crime. There is no reason for the public to dig into this person’s life with such fervor.

Probably not, but the election of the same name as the boy that was assassinated is unfortunate at least.

that's a scary comment. I'll remind you that he's innocent until someone proves otherwise.

Thats a presumption in pursuit of justice, not a principle to follow. Humans are generally all guilty of something, even if they dont get caught

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