alt Hacker News> I don't think there is any reason to protest outside people's personal residences. People can protest at a government building, or a public square, or somewhere intentionally disruptive that isn't implicitly aimed at intimidating a public servant.
All protest is aimed at intimidating someone. Free-speech zones aren't going to make anything better. I'd absolutely support anyone protesting something I agree with (or protesting for something I don't) and can't imagine that limiting people's right to protest or increasing the ability of government to hide from the public would be good for anyone except corrupt or incompetent government officials.
> This is the purview of journalists, police, and independent investigative boards.
There are no special rights given to "journalists" that aren't already given to all people. Journalists are just regular people and everyone has the freedom of the press. This matters more than ever today considering that our mass media is captured by political interests and controlled by an increasingly small number of rich people. We need independent journalists to be free to do their work. We absolutely need random "unqualified" people "stalking" politicians to uncover fraud. (where "unqualified" means independent, and "stalking" just means evidence gathering through recording or public records requests). There are countless of examples of "random nobodies" uncovering fraud or corruption. Some of them are doing it by carrying out long drawn out investigations over many months where they gather and review documents and conduct interviews, while others are doing it in a matter of seconds with nothing more than a cell phone recording posted to the internet. Some of those people uncovering and reporting corruption are people I'd generally disagree with politically, but I'll still support what they're doing because it's a critical function of a free nation.
As for police, there's a lot of problems with government investigating themselves and their friends. Independent investigative boards can be helpful but they too are best when they're just regular people.
There are extremely few public servants being assassinated in their homes. There are far more cases of public servants killing innocent people.
> All protest is aimed at intimidating someone.
This isn't entirely true, but insofar as some protest is aimed at intimidation, protest should be aimed at intimidating the government as a whole, not a specific individual, unless perhaps that specific individual is the government as a whole, in which case they'll probably have tanks guarding their palace from unruly protestors and this discussion is moot.
> I'd absolutely support anyone protesting something I agree with
Even in a mob with 500 torches and pitchforks outside your family's house?
> There are no special rights given to "journalists" that aren't already given to all people. Journalists are just regular people and everyone has the freedom of the press.
This is correct in a technical sense but not really correct in a reality sense. Journalists are not privileged with legal rights, but they absolutely have many special social rights. Journalists are given access to places regular people would not be given access to all the time, and people are willing to talk to and divulge information to journalists that they would not be willing to give to random individuals. For an established journalist, it would be trivial to obtain a politician's address even if it were not public record. This social trust is earned by a record of professionalism.
> There are extremely few public servants being assassinated in their homes. There are far more cases of public servants killing innocent people.
The latter statement seems like a non-sequitur. It is true, but not really connected to the topic at hand. Knowing a politician's address doesn't stop them from killing people. It simply results in more total killing in the world, not less. We should strive to reduce all sources of senseless violence, and giving out politician's addresses is absolutely one of those sources.