Data Brokers Can Fuel Violence Against Public Servants
wired.com> information about public employees is uniquely available
It really isn't unique. This report is clearly part of an agenda to establish a two-tier surveillance state.
> The report advocates for legislation that would specifically address privacy concerns for all public servants,
Instead of taking the obvious stance that legislation should ensure the privacy of all people equally, they are only interested in protecting government employees. Sadly, this seems to be a global trend taking root in many countries and it brings me great despair for the future.
I cannot speak for the US but in Germany there is certainly some amount of violence towards local politicians but also other parts of administration (job centers, etc) Traditionally there was maximum transparency (names of every single reponsible person for each minor municipal job) with little choice for employees to opt out. This is changing not under special rules but mostly under GDPR adoption. However, particularly elected officials (even for very minor local roles) even have to expose their street address to get elected (such legal requirements can provide GDPR exception). This generates real risk. If less and less or the "wrong" people go into administration we are in trouble, IMHO. I know there is a lot of governments vs the people sentiment popping up. But we need to just make sure that we treat our administration also as people in certain situations. (Disclaimer: as a university lecturer I am officially a public servant, but I do not think any of this would apply to me: I hardly have to fear the wrath of the students)
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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...
You left out - was a foreigner, managed to escape, faced zero consequences at home (AFAIK).
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.
Until some other nefarious air traffic controller waits for him to remarry and have another family.
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?
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?
To match more closely the question about politicians, why would you need the home address of your direct supervisor? Seems quite suspect to me.
> 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.
> 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.
> 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.
Its literally the last check of power... rich people will find out exactly where the power people live. The masses also need to know
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
> All protest is aimed at intimidating someone.
This isn't entirely true, but insofar as some protest is aimed at intimidation, protest should be aimed at intimidating the government as a whole, not a specific individual, unless perhaps that specific individual is the government as a whole, in which case they'll probably have tanks guarding their palace from unruly protestors and this discussion is moot.
> I'd absolutely support anyone protesting something I agree with
Even in a mob with 500 torches and pitchforks outside your family's house?
> 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 is correct in a technical sense but not really correct in a reality sense. Journalists are not privileged with legal rights, but they absolutely have many special social rights. Journalists are given access to places regular people would not be given access to all the time, and people are willing to talk to and divulge information to journalists that they would not be willing to give to random individuals. For an established journalist, it would be trivial to obtain a politician's address even if it were not public record. This social trust is earned by a record of professionalism.
> There are extremely few public servants being assassinated in their homes. There are far more cases of public servants killing innocent people.
The latter statement seems like a non-sequitur. It is true, but not really connected to the topic at hand. Knowing a politician's address doesn't stop them from killing people. It simply results in more total killing in the world, not less. We should strive to reduce all sources of senseless violence, and giving out politician's addresses is absolutely one of those sources.
> protest should be aimed at intimidating the government as a whole, not a specific individual
If I find out that a city councilman is accepting bribes or using public money for personal expenses, why should I protest "government as a whole" and not that one city councilman doing the bad thing? What is protesting government as a whole going to do about raising awareness of one person's corruption?
> Even in a mob with 500 torches and pitchforks outside your family's house?
Yes, provided there was a member of my family here who worked for the government who those people were peacefully protesting.
> For an established journalist, it would be trivial to obtain a politician's address even if it were not public record.
How exactly? Stalking? There are other ways, true, but those are available to anyone right? What way exists that is trivial for a journalist, but not trivial for anyone else?
If a government worker's address are already easy for anyone to find even if they aren't public record than what's the harm in them being public record anyway? (you could equally argue that if every government worker's address was trivial to find elsewhere there'd be no need to make them available in public records, but there are advantages to having a standardized process that works everywhere for everyone vs trying to find various other means until one works)
> Knowing a politician's address doesn't stop them from killing people.
It can pressure them to resign, or generate enough press and attention that they are removed from their position (voted out by the people for example), or just pressure them to do a better job so as not to outrage the people they're supposed to serve. Not every protest at someone's home turns into a murder.
Making it slightly more involved for randos to show up at your literal doorstep hardly seems like hiding from one's constituency.
I really think the entire concept of privacy has really changed in my lifetime, especially around what needs to be kept private and what we don’t mind sharing.
When I was a youth in the 80s and 90s, it seems like our desire for privacy was focused on what we were doing and talking about; we didn’t want people to know our activities or what our conversations were about. Someone listening in while you talked to someone else was considered an invasion of privacy. However, we freely shared identifying information and didn’t think that was something that needed to be protected. In my town, our phone book white pages had everyone in town’s name, phone number, and address. Those details weren’t things we thought needed to be kept hidden from the public. Every now and then you would hear about someone who was “unlisted”, but that was considered odd.
Now, people will freely post pictures about their activities in public places, have public conversations, and share all sorts of details about how they live their lives that we would never have shared with strangers 40 years ago. At the same time, the idea of publishing our name, address, and phone number for everyone to see is horrifying. We even have a term for it, “doxing”, which many people want to make a crime, and we would never have even thought about it 40 years ago.
I think there are a ton of valid reasons for this shift, but it does make me think. A major part of why we want to keep those details private is because we have created so many systems that allow you to commit fraud or take advantage of people with only those details. While I think we should maintain and extend our ability to keep those details about us secret, I also think we need to do something about the systems we have in place that allow you to do so much damage to a person with only knowing these basic details about them.
The report linked in the article doesn't mention existing laws mandating disclosure of public servant details or anything of that nature. It primarily focuses on private data brokers collecting and selling data, a threat model which applies to all people equally. Rather than addressing the problem at its root, which is the data brokers blatantly violating the privacy of everyone, by all appearances they are perfectly fine with what data brokers do as long as they are able to exempt themselves from it.
I think that posting street addresses for "maximum transparency" is a bit silly, and it would probably make sense to repeal legislation that makes government employee's sensitive private information public. That principle should also apply equally to all citizens, though. If I'm not mistaken, I believe anyone who hosts a website in Germany is mandated by law to post their address on the website, which is completely unfathomable to me.
We do also see the two-tier surveillance hierarchy attempting to be established across the EU, in general. Chat Control in all its forms is always proposed with an exemption for government employees.
Yes, the public nature of government payrolls is unique. Many of the other concerns mentioned in the article are more broadly problematic, but private payrolls are not published. Government payrolls are. You can seek out the names, titles, and salaries of most public employees.
You phrased this as "many of the other concerns mentioned in the article", but this concern is not mentioned in the article, nor in the linked report. It falls on the article/report to make the case for its claims, not for charitable HN comments, and it fails to do so. The article highlights three specific concerns: that there is no ability for public servants to compel the redaction of personal data from public records, that there is no broad law preventing data brokers from selling information obtained from property records and court filings, and that there is no recourse to sue data brokers for violating local laws that do exist. All of those apply equally to private citizens, and therefore the claim that these problems are "unique" to public servants is not supported. Furthermore, these claims are the basis for which the report goes on to suggest making a carve-out in legislation specifically covering public servants rather than the general public for the problems it identified, when all of those problems should very much be addressed on a general basis.
Private payrolls are published though.
Not to the general public. Your neighbor very likely cannot just go to a website and look up your title and current salary, like I can for the guy who lives down the block who currently works for the city I live in.
Where?
Government employees have power and they are flexing the power.
C'est la vie!
To start with: everyone deserves privacy, yes.
The rest of my reply reflects my understanding based on listening to my partner every day, who works in public records for the county where we live.
From what I've learned, public employees do seem uniquely vulnerable. Two employees (that we know about) have committed suicide in the past year or two; it was strongly suggested the pressure and harassment endured on the job was a factor.
- At any public-facing job (say, a restaurant server or customer support), are you legally required to respond to every single person? And in doing so, reveal your full, real name? Not required like "your employer wants you to" required, but LEGALLY required, like you can be sued if you don't? - If someone is making threats or clearly abusing the system intentionally, can you politely ask them to leave, trespass them, or just refuse to help them further? Or are you still required to help them anyway by law? - Are you obligated to help someone even if they're anonymous? - Are your own communications and employment details public records? - Are you legally obligated to allow anyone to come to your place of work, and be physically present, while you help them? - Are millions of people as angry at your employer as people generally are at "the government"?
Here are just a few of the things I've heard about the public records situation where we live:
- There are a handful of people who are infamous throughout the departments for abusing the system with dozens or hundreds of broad requests (and no, these aren't reporters or being doing interesting studies of anything). Some of these people are even disgruntled former employees or relatives of former employees, who are doing so purely for retaliation, because they know it will overload the system. But, the public records law is strong, so there is no provision for denying them access. The estimated time to fully complete some of these individuals' public records request is decades. As in, "we expect your final delivery of records to be complete in the year 2050." - Even after people receive their records, some pretend not to know how to read them purely to waste more time (like not knowing how to open a zip file - which every operating system does automatically - or a PDF). When an alternative is sent, they move on to the next excuse for not being able to read them. The law requires assisting these people, even if they're faking it. - Requestors frequently think they know the law better than the public employees serving them (and they're almost always wrong), and will heap all kinds of abuse on the records officers for perceived violations and incompetence. This abuse ranges from simple name calling, to threatening lawsuits, to sending employees their home address (in an "I know where you live" way as a veiled threat), to sending them the addresses of their parents, even to calling and harassing their parents. Can you imagine your parents being harassed because someone was unhappy with how you were doing your job? All while you were doing your job efficiently and correctly? - The law allows for the public to review physical records at the department in person, not just accept email/portal delivery. So, the enraged person threatening you and your family has a legal right to come hang out in your office with you. - The legal teams for said departments are extremely cautious about running afoul of the public records entitlement laws, or being perceived as retaliating, even if it means their employees are receiving threats and feel unsafe.
So, what to do? To me, it makes more sense for the solution to be on the job & "citizens' rights" side rather than the "protect employees from data brokers" side. Everyone should be more protected from data brokers. But public employees also deserve additional protection from malicious actors in the course of carrying out their duties - that is to say, yes, you have the right to request public records, but the government should have a lower tolerance for people abusing and system and acting maliciously.
You make a better case than the report does. I think what you say is valid; what I took issue with is the report specifically fixating on issues that everyone faces, and advocating for legislation that only solves the problem for a privileged class. If in addition to passing laws to protect everyone from data brokers, additional measures needed to be put in place to protect civil servants from abuse unique to the job, I am certainly not opposed to that. Unfortunately the report did not acknowledge that such problems exist, let alone propose solutions to that effect.
Sorry for the formatting and typos, I guess new accounts aren't allowed to edit.
I think EVERYONE is worthy of privacy. The ad cartel has millions (billions?) of lobby money in their war chest. Any real reform would be moving a mountain. Funny how it's framed this way; shows just how impossible it is to concede to privacy for all. Instead we have as another commenter said: "a two-tier surveillance state."
Everyone is worthy of privacy in their private activty, not in how they impose their will on the public (through official acts, removing real estate from the commons, and publish or finance mass media).
Why would we care more about public servants than regular people? Regular citizens need their info protected, not government servants.
If you are working in the public sector, your info will be completely out there. That is how a functioning government works with accountability.
What would happen if we just banned data brokers?
Better question: What if we actually punished perpetrators of threats and doxing with the existing laws we have against terroristic threats? Why do we treat this as some unstoppable force of nature when the vast majority of them come through traceable methods like mail or phone?
Why not both?
Then many complex commercial activities would be eliminated or have far higher transaction/insurance costs.
For example, loans. They would be priced against average risk, and low-risk individuals with privacy would pay the same risk premium as high-risk individuals.
This may be fine for individuals who voluntary give up privacy at chosen moments for chosen partners. It would be more complex and expensive to operate that general open brokerages.
Loans were enormously profitable long before people were tracked 24/7 and all their data sold by brokers. We'd get by just fine without it.
Would that then involve private investigators?
A bunch of leeches would come out from the crevices acting like something that has only been around for a few decades is paramount to American democracy and capitalism where any regulations are akin to a struggle session against liberty, freedom, and justice.
See also: DHS/TSA/ICE, credit scores, stock buybacks and self-dividends.
All very, very recent systems in the grander scheme.
For the life of me I can't figure out what point your trying to make. These things are new so we should ban them? Some people will say these are good even though they're new?
"In the grander scheme" interstate highways and air travel and scuba diving are new too, what about them?
Only that they are all quite new, but are frequently defended as if they are integral components of the country since time immemorial.
As you say, on balance some of them are good/should be preserved, and some should be reconsidered.
Fair point; but to take one of the less divisive ones in your list, I don't think I've ever heard someone say that stock buybacks are integral components of the country. I have, however, heard pretty convincing arguments that the government should not in general prevent a company from spending its money the way it sees fit. It's not a straight line from "stock buybacks are generally bad" to "the government should ban them," and it seems to me a pretty consistent opinion to think both that stock buybacks are bad and that the government should not have anywhere near enough power to prevent companies from doing them if that's what they want to do.
What I've never understood is: how is stock buyback not the same thing as paying down outstanding debt? You sell stock to raise money, and doesn't it make sense to return that money when there's a surplus?
This "there is a threat" talk is going too far, unrelated to that i find curious how the electoral processes are being attack recently.
Unaccountable elite want to remain unaccountable.
Public is bad, must make them more accountable and more surveilled.
Do not watch the public servants, do not notice that they act more like "private" servants.
Anyone who says anything, anywhere, gets threats. Is there any data showing the follow-through percent is any higher for public servants?
Asking the wrong question IMO. Even if the "follow-through" happens at a higher rate that doesn't necessarily influence whether this data should be hidden or not. You have to look at why the data is public in the first place - "I pay this person's salary, so I am entitled to know how much their salary is (among other things you typically know about an employee)."
Whether or not violence committed against public servants happens at a higher rate than the private citizenry doesn't impact the truthfulness of that statement. So if the article wants to make a coherent argument for hiding this type of information about public servants from the public, it needs to attack that point.
Why should paying you entitle me to know your home address? Paying you entitles me to some amount of your labor. I don't see why there should be anything else to it.
In practical terms businesses are required to collect employee PII in order to comply with various regulations. But that's not "entitled" that's "government imposed for unrelated reasons". (Those unrelated reasons being illegal aliens and tax compliance.)
There's also an element of risk management with the employer wanting to run a background check. But there's no particular reason that can't be done via a mutually trusted third party, similar to escrow. In fact it often is done that way in the residential rental business - the applicant authorizes the check and pays the third party who then furnishes the report to the landlord.
Maybe you can argue that a private employer shouldn't be allowed to know their employee's addresses but it's mostly irrelevant because things like tax laws require them to.
It also has nothing to do with public employees which are completely different because we have the right to know that data about government employees. It allows us to protest outside of their homes. It allows us to investigate them for corruption and fraud. It allows us to enforce laws that require residency in order to hold certain positions. An open/transparent government means no secret employees allowed.
> 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".
> 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.