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Comment by rjbwork | Hacker News Reader

Totally agree. Get everyone's details off the internet and you get those who are more equal than others' off as well. You shouldn't get special privileges because you work for the government.

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I understand and sympathize with this view. But it seems likely that a federal judge is more likely to be a target of something like this. Mostly because of the nature of their work.

Sure, but if you look at all type work injury/mortality related issues, I doubt federal judge is at the top of the list. What could happen here though is that even though federal judges arn't at that great a risk in overall work related injury or harm, because they are a high authority high yielding power role they might have their risk addressed first and foremost, while others don't.

That’s about as irrelevant a position as possible.

In this case, the judge wasn’t injured on the job, her child was murdered by a would be assassin. How many software engineers have that problem?

>How many software engineers have that problem?

Is that an honest question?

Lots.

We like to think that software engineering is a totally run-of-the-mill occupation, but even with the most basic imagination I can think of scenarios where a software engineer would be threatened by kidnapping/torture/murder/blackmail.

Not all software developers are making web-apps for the next big startup, some of them are working on extremely secret, extremely secure, extremely influential, and extremely deadly software, often times employed by extremely powerful entities.

I had a disgruntled ex-customer show up at my place when a startup went under. It wasn’t violent but certainly felt like it could have been. You don’t need to be working on secret deadly software for powerful entities.

You had a disgruntled person upset at a company. That's a threat and is scary. I'm not downplaying workplace violence -- it's a different threat with different precautions needed.

In the judicial situation, you have a specific unstable/desperate person focusing their anger at Judge X. A judge is a symbol of the state, control, and of a specific matter.

The person doesn't accept responsibility for his actions and holds Judge X specifically accountable for his loss of freedom/income/family/etc. In this modern world, you add on the dimension of unstable politically motived disturbed individuals goaded on by various means. We're fortunate as a society in that disturbed people tend to be disorganized and ineffective, but I think that things are changing that make some of these individuals more dangerous.

Without going into the details too much, the person held the founders (us) responsible for their financial loss. They made some anonymous death threats online first but we didn’t take it very seriously.

I’m sure judges and politicians are at higher risk of retribution, no doubt about it. I only argue we’re not immune as engineers and tech founders. Someone who’s deeply disturbed can direct their blame on anyone remotely involved in their life.

Enough, but they are targeted by the authorities instead.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10101469

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6946909

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160505/00383034349/fbi-h...

The software engineers at YouTube may disagree with you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube_headquarters_shooting

> But it seems likely that a federal judge is more likely to be a target

More likely than...? It would really help understand what you're thinking if you'd finish the sentence.

And I hope you aren't thinking "your average person". If we passed a law to address median risk disparities in all the places we could, essentially everything that isn't mandatory would be forbidden.

I was thinking "more likely than me".

Was mostly responding to the parent comment of "You shouldn't get special privileges because you work for the government."

Maybe some people should get protection or consideration because of their occupation. Didn't mean to say that federal judges should have more than another occupation or situation that we may want to compare against.

Thanks for pointing out that I could have communicated more effectively, though.!

So are psychologists, doctors, debt collectors, lawyers, managers (think: firing), HR staff, businessmen and many other job categories.

Exactly and not even that, look at the number of name and shame requests for rosters based on peoples votes? How long until one of those turns into a bad situation?

All data should be equally protected, lest we fall into the all animals are equal except some are more equal fallacy.

Talking about lawyers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24957200

What about jobs in the private industry that make people roughly equally as likely to be targetted? Her proposed law doesn't do anything for them.

Tow truck driver, repoman, meth clinic server, bouncer, loomis car driver...

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