> It isn’t all bad news. These same reidentification techniques were used by journalists working at the New York Times earlier this year to expose Donald Trump’s tax returns from 1985 to 1994.
Flippant comments like that make it hard to take the authors seriously. Their concern for privacy apparently evaporates when the techniques are applied against people they don't like.
Things such as conflicts of interest, crimes, and lies about where/how they got their money and whether they're really as wealthy as they claim to be, whether they've cheated on their taxes or paid unfairly low taxes considering their enormous wealth are all things that could influence these critically important decisions on the part of the public.
A further argument is that officials serving in public office don't have the same expectation of privacy that private citizens do.
In view of these two arguments and others it's not difficult to see why the authors of this article need not consider the revelation of Trump's tax returns a good thing merely because they don't like him.
Further, there is no evidence in the article that its authors would not be concerned about the privacy rights of other people they don't like who aren't: 1 - the President of the US, and 2 - not public officials.
Up until the point that access to Trump's tax returns was mentioned the article was warning about the false privacy associated with anonymizing identity.
I can understand the argument that candidates should reveal their financial history. But that doesn't mean otherwise reasonable concerns about false anonymity should be suspended when talking about the anonymity of one particular person who has explicitly asserted their privacy rights.
Even if you think the authors were making a more general statement about all candidates and not just Trump, that seems like a terrible argument to me. In the cases of candidates for office, voters are free to penalize candidates who don't reveal enough information about themselves by not voting for them. There is no need to soften any privacy concerns about anonymized identities.
Compare these two hypothetical scenarios:
1 - Voters don't have access to the candidate's tax records
2 - Due to released tax records, the voters know for certain all of the below facts about the candidate: A - The candidate paid no taxes, B - The candidate cheated on their taxes, C - The candidate is not as rich as they claim to be, D - The candidate's businesses lost money so they're not as good a businessperson as they claim to be
In the first hypothetical scenario the voters the voters know there's a possibility that the candidate might be hiding something, in the second hypothetical scenario the voters know for certain that the candidate is a lawbreaking, tax cheating, lying hypocrite.
In which of these hypothetical scenario do you think the voters are going to penalize the candidate more?