That the federal government and thousands of random people that work for the federal government have all your finances at their fingertips is bad enough, but then they also make this information available to basically anybody (a reporter with no subpoena power) if you're willing to make the magic incantation (FOIA request or whatever).
Transparency of government is good, but personal data government should be private. (Even better if we gave a whole lot less personal info.)
I don't feel particularly disturbed by it, I guess. What proportion of a country's resources are controlled by whom seems like something the citizens of that country might legitimately want to know, especially when the proportions are large enough to affect matters of public policy.
Incomes aren't public here (Denmark), but our neighbors to the northwest publish lists of everyone's income and net worth once a year, which doesn't seem to have ruined Norway. I don't think I'd find it disturbing if Denmark did the same, though I don't know of any plans to do so. If anything it might increase some government transparency— there are some very large family fortunes (Mærsk, Carlsberg/Jacobsen, etc.) that have longstanding and often rather cozy relationships with the government. It might add some insight into things if the public better understood who controlled which parts of those fortunes.
This story is disturbing in that it shows how little financial privacy we have left in the US (and Western Europe and Canada too).
Just look at the incredible lengths these guys went to:
http://images.bwbx.io/cms/2014-05-09/billionaires-970-popup....
to preserve their privacy.
That the federal government and thousands of random people that work for the federal government have all your finances at their fingertips is bad enough, but then they also make this information available to basically anybody (a reporter with no subpoena power) if you're willing to make the magic incantation (FOIA request or whatever).
Transparency of government is good, but personal data government should be private. (Even better if we gave a whole lot less personal info.)