Disruptive ProactivityWho is responsible for legal entities?
Unsurprisingly, a meeting in Shoreditch was not going well.
Someone was trying to convince me (and others) that there needed to be a privacy and data protection exemption for data about organisations they wanted to open.
No one was buying it; but the person involved was pressing ahead, and was going to try and convince a Minister anyway.
In exasperation, the phrase I ended the debate with was “this isn’t a privacy issue, it’s what public records mean in the 21st century”. (In practice, I was probably rather more colourful)
That has been the settlement since the meeting. For willful acts, that should be open data, and that didn’t need a democratic debate (it was only opposed by the tax havens).
If create a business, in return for the tax and legal benefits of a seperate legal entity, some information on who you are goes into the public domain. Transparency in a democracy lets citizens see who is responsible for legal entities.
On Monday, the Government data copying consultation will open, and take that in an utterly unexpected direction.
Is there a political difference between creating a company and creating a child?