Maya Forstater

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?)

Of course it wasn't beneficial ownership information I looked at it was company directorship, which has been in the public domain since forever in the UK. But the internet & the open data approach of the companies house register makes it highly searchable

I don't know what the right answer on privacy/openness is, but things I do know (1) for directorship/BO data to be useful it must identify individuals (2) there are small harms to many individuals if this data is open (3) these harms are not addressed by exemptions.

The benefit must justify the harm. What we should not do is try to fudge it by pretending (1) personal identity is not interoperably revealed (2) there are no harms to individuals from having this info in public domain (3) any harms that there are can be addressed by exemptions