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Comment by klipklop | Hacker News Reader

Personally I feel people and especially corporations/REITs do not have the right to hide what real estate they own. Sure put it in a trust, but the public has the right to know who controls it.

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I have a friend who has someone who has repeatedly threatened to assault her, and her primary protection is keeping her address hidden from him. Should she never be allowed to own a house at risk of being assaulted?

Maybe have a limited exception then, like rape shield laws. You don't need to gut the entire framework for this rare situation. (Plus it would be fun to watch corporate lawyers try to exploit this loophole.)

Or maybe just stop telling people what cases are "legitimate" reasons to protect themselves and what cases aren't.

I know multiple people who have gotten death threats because of technical comments they made online, or just for having the temerity to exist as a member of a minority group. Not the vague "I'm going to kill you" kind, the "here's a picture of your front door on Google Street View, and an unsolicited pizza, I could SWAT you at any arbitrary 3am, have fun being afraid" type.

I don't feel like the solution to this is having victims set up LLCs.

You're advocating taking away, a method people have to protect themselves, with a simple "oh, I'm not so sure".

How about you make an iron clad promise people will be safe? How about if someone dies because of your minor concerns, you go to jail for life?

Would you be so "oh well" then?

If not, you're probably not taking people's very lives seriously.

I mean I get where they are coming from. It doesn’t strike you as a little odd that people have to protect themselves from dangerous individuals stalking them by setting up businesses? That’s not a little circuitous/indirect? Is that really in line with the purpose of setting up a business in the first place?

It’s not like that’s the only way to hide your identity, it’s just one currently available. Plus it’s a very trivial to look up who owns an LLC at least in my state. Not the best solution IMO

Either way I think you’re being a little uncharitable towards them. I don’t think they’re trivializing it, I think they’re asking a very legitimate question.

Do you find this style of argument to be productive?

It isn't, but that's the best solution that is currently available to people.

A better solution would be to stop putting people's addresses in public records, and eliminating data brokers that expose name/address correlations.

This is pure whataboutism and made in bad faith. I feel for your friend (if they exist beyond you trying to make an argument), but there are various physical and legal ways to protect yourself from this situation in the US. This edge case is not a good enough reason help shield foreign oligarchs and large corps holding real estate in secret. There is probably a compromise somewhere between both extremes.

You'll have to trust me that she's real, but I promise you that this is a real situation that she's actually concerned about.

> This is pure whataboutism

This is by definition not whataboutism. Whataboutism is when you distract from a thing with unrelated things (e.g. "but there are more important bad things going on in the world than this!"). It is not whataboutism to bring up legitimate related counterarguments for a policy.

True, I did misuse it to a degree. I was actually a bit unsure.

I think its pretty easy to separate investment properties from primary residences when it comes to transparency requirements.

Where do you stand on encryption? Do you feel like the "I have nothing to hide" argument has any merit? If you think people have the right to privacy, why should real estate be an exception? I personally find the fact that real estate ownership is public in the US to be quite bizarre.

Property is a physical thing in the real world that has been here long before anyone "owned it", and will be here long after all the "owners" are gone.

The public, i.e. the people on this planet, have a right to know who is claiming to own which part of the grass and soil that we all share.

They have the right to know that, but why should they know the transaction price?

To support a fair market of property value

> Where do you stand on encryption?

This is a really complicated and broad topic that I cant take the time to type out here. I do not stand on the side of "I have nothing to hide." I fully understand the risks of that position. People must keep some secrets to protect themselves from society. Especially as everything devolves into increasingly strict "purity" tests.

With that said, I don't think the right to obfuscate real estate transactions is the same as spicy personal beliefs/private conversations/etc. IMO there is nothing more public than real estate. I do not consider real estate transactions as protected speech nor one that can be legally hidden. We live in this world together.

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