alt Hacker News> 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.