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Is there any reason this data shouldn't be public for everyone to read?
by tabakd 2y ago
Is there any reason this data shouldn't be public for everyone to read?
- jpcom 2y agodefine "everyone" -- elected officials who are supposed to have oversight and insight into where our tax dollars are going? It's not like they're providing replicas over bittorrent.
- procaryote 2y agoGive it time. Centralised access managed by junior engineers pretty much guarantees the data gets stolen. Perhaps the first foreign adversary nation state getting there will patch the security flaws after stealing the data?
- Amezarak 2y agoA Chinese APT had unfettered access to the Treasury Department, discovered back in December. It's interesting that people are much more excited about new government employees accessing these systems as part of their duties than they are about this.
- xnx 2y agoTrue, but the Chinese also can't order malicious tax audits against political opponents like Trump can.
- Amezarak 2y agoAre you arguing that people are at risk because a comparison of Treasury and IRS records is going to reveal tax fraud or something? I don’t think that’s on the table. At any rate, Trump doesn’t need DOGE to do that, he can just order the IRS to do it like FDR did if that’s what he’s going to do.
- procaryote 2y agoA foreign adversary hacking a governmental system isn't good, but it's also kinda expected that they'll try. That "just an advisor (but not really)" Musk and his ragtag group of junior developers get god mode access to lots of governmental systems is less expected. There are legal ways for the president to direct these departments, so when he opts for the illegal path, it's definitely noteworthy.
- Amezarak 2y agoIt isn’t illegal.
- procaryote 2y agoSo who is the head of Department of Government Efficiency? If it's Musk, like Musk and Donald has said lots of times, why is he not confirmed by congress?
- pyrale 2y agoWould you want a prospective employer to have access to your past tax returns when negociating salary? The article also mentions information about employees operating in conflict zones.
- cobertos 2y agoSalary information is already easy to get thanks to The Work Number
- jhardy54 2y agoDoes TWN provide income data for background checks? I’d imagine that the data depends on your permissible purpose.
- cobertos 2y agoHard to say. I only know the salary data ends up at less scrupulous data brokers (e.g. ones that sell directly to advertisers, though perhaps TWN does this too, idk)
- chipsrafferty 2y agoA lot of jobs don't use TWN. None of the ones I've had did so.
- cobertos 2y agoIt's not the employers themselves that use TWN directly, but the payroll companies the employers use. Perhaps in your industry or at your particular choice for jobs, the choice of payroll software does not end up aligning with TWN? _All_ of my previous salaried tech jobs do use TWN (I had to call each one, when a background check company seemingly couldn't do it themselves) It seems most payroll companies send data to TWN [0]. Though I'd question the quality and breadth of each data feed. I also haven't looking into the percentage of US companies who use payroll software from the big providers and/or do it themselves [0]: this comment tree at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41510103#41512326 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41510103#41512326
- WhyNotHugo 2y agoUSAID collaborates in fighting for worker rights when they are in exploitation or near-slavery. They likely have records of the people inside organisations who provide data for them. These people usually want to remain anonymous because they fear retaliation. And in many cases, we’re not just talking about being fired or legal actions as retaliation.
- intended 2y agoBecause you have a right to privacy.
- willis936 2y agoYou personally are cool with me personally knowing your salary and where you live? Please just post that here right now.
- Etheryte 2y agoThat might sound incredibly foreign to you, but this is the norm in many Nordic countries, see Norway, Sweden and Finland, for a start. Tax returns for everyone are public, and so are addresses through a national registry.
- stackedinserter 2y agoWhy do they need it? Besides dumb envy, why would I need someone's tax return? What's in it for me?
- Etheryte 2y agoSalary negotiations are a very simple example, you can easily compare your salary to that of your peers and to similar positions in other companies. If your boss tells you they pay you the industry average or company average or whatnot, you wouldn't be able to check whether that's actually true otherwise. You can also have a rough ballpark of what a company pays before you apply for a job there. In general, information like this being public empowers people, whereas in most countries companies hold all the cards and use this information asymmetry to their advantage.
- stackedinserter 2y agoOK, you see that your peer earns 2x more than you, then what? You automatically assume that you need to be paid the same?
- TrapLord_Rhodo 2y agoit's another data point in a negotiation.
- xnx 2y agoI would love it if tax returns were public (as they are in other countries), but that's not what's happening here.
- dralley 2y agoMost of it already was, but normies don't go looking for public expenditure databases, so they assume it doesn't exist. Then DOGE comes along and pretends they're doing something new.
- ncr100 2y agoMany. It's private for basic reasons, as are PII in your workplace.
- insane_dreamer 2y agoLets start with Trump and Musk.