Maya Forstater

A personal experience which illuminates the point on thinking about harms re: #opendata on #beneficialownership & company directorship.... I was reading a letter to the editor on a controversial topic from a woman with a generic name and no address given. I wondered who she was.

It was the work of about 20 seconds to find out her address, because she was listed as a Director on companies house website. This is the kind of small harm that isn't considered in this analysis @opencorporateshttps://twitter.com/MForstater/status/1135570733600530433 …

The small harm is that she thought she could write her opinion in relative obscurity, but in fact she is easy to find...or alternatively someone might realise that they are so easily searchable and decide not to write the letter at all.

In the US and other jurisdictions without searchable company registers online it would not have been able to find her so easily this way. On the other hand in the US if she'd ever been arrested I could have found her mugshot http://www.mugshotsocala.com/ 

Both situations raise privacy questions. The power of open data is the interoperability (you can link different records together from different sources). But this is also what busts individual privacy.

Are people saying that *on principle* if you ever been the director or beneficial owner of a company you should never be able to write a letter to the editor in obscurity? Does the same apply if you've ever been arrested by the police ? (or only one or the other?)