> Both seem counter to the notion of a republic and the accountability needed for private property.
Imagine that you own and run Acme Critical Publishing, which publishes exposés of crimes and ethical lapses of the sitting President. In speeches, he starts rambling about your company as an example of Horrible Very Bad People, and the next thing you know some supported of his casually looked up your home address online and now there are burning lower-case-t's on your lawn... I'd say the republic and accountability are both suffering in that scenario.
It's one of those "tools that can be used for for good or evil" things, and simply prohibiting the tool isn't necessarily the best way to maximize the good while minimizing the evil.
In your story, there are two failures; firstly, the President's failure to exhibit due care in the content of his speeches (an increased responsibility due to his lofty station), secondly, the lack of a police response to disperse ominous gatherings before they become violent.
Neither of these failures have anything to do with the anonymity of company directors. The President could know you personally, and still leak your address. Similarly, there could be a mob vandalising your property even if you didn't run Acme Critical Publishing, because that kind of thing happens in riots sometimes.
In some countries there is almost no anonymity on the public record, but this doesn't seem to negatively affect the level of violence in their societies compared to otherwise comparable locations. Therefore I would opine that 'enjoying safety' and 'enjoying privacy' are two very different and mostly orthogonal issues.
> firstly, the President's failure to exhibit due care in the content of his speeches (an increased responsibility due to his lofty station)
There is no such legal requirement, right? What's holding the president accountable?
> the lack of a police response to disperse ominous gatherings before they become violent.
It's really not possible for the police to do this. Regardless, GP's comment was about one or a small number of people showing up to cause trouble. In reality, the police can pretty much do nothing to prevent this. If they could, there really wouldn't be any robberies or murder.
> It's really not possible for the police to do this.
You try burning t's on the front lawns of politicians and see how quickly the police do exactly that. You seem to think it's a perfect crime and you could never be caught or held accountable. That's an insane view, but you're welcome to test it for yourself and see what happens. I think you might be surprised.
A lone person (or even a small group) could show up and cause trouble on anyone's property at any time. Why don't most people do it? Probably because police exist and there would be consequences. Should everyone have their addresses hidden from all people at all times? Why should a company have that protection and not you?
What makes them so special?
I think it's far better to understand that transparency is important to our democracy and our freedom and that means accepting a certain amount of risk sometimes. The fact that someone, somewhere, might one day find out where you live is a risk almost all of us face right now. There's no reason for a privileged class of people who want to influence our lives and government while also hiding themselves from the public and accountability.
> disperse ominous gatherings [...] a mob [...] riots
Hold up, I didn't say anything about a riot, let alone a physical gathering. Just the contents of a speech where your hypothetical publishing company has become fingered as a target. It could very well be a video on a campaign-blog.
> the level of violence in their societies
The analogy isn't about violence, it's about kinds of damage to you (and to the republic) when the privacy is pierced, and violence just happens to be the most illustratively-obvious form of that.
So, imagine if Trump exposed the contact info of people behind one of those groups showing anti-trump ads. His minions could use it as a signal to attack them.
Ok, so we only allow the government the privilege of knowing who owns what… then we worry about the government abusing this information for political gain?
Imagine that you own and run Acme Critical Publishing, which publishes exposés of crimes and ethical lapses of the sitting President. In speeches, he starts rambling about your company as an example of Horrible Very Bad People, and the next thing you know some supported of his casually looked up your home address online and now there are burning lower-case-t's on your lawn... I'd say the republic and accountability are both suffering in that scenario.
It's one of those "tools that can be used for for good or evil" things, and simply prohibiting the tool isn't necessarily the best way to maximize the good while minimizing the evil.