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Comment by fc417fc802 | Hacker News Reader

> protest outside of their homes.

I don't think that should be permissible.

> investigate them for corruption and fraud.

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".

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> Why does that involve a home address?

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.

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