My personal opinion is that this is a terrible decision. Anonymous speech - which requires privacy - is valuable for democracy; but anonymous power is corrosive to it. So we should treat these two things as mutually exclusive. If you are wielding the power of the state or a monied corporation, you should be surrendering your privacy in the process.
Data isn't knowledge. Records like these seldom, but not never, actually cast a useful light. The worst of the malfeasance can pay for the workarounds or don't care that the information they record is simply false. Without the power of a criminal investigation you can't do anything about the obfuscated or false information, and with a criminal investigation there is little need for the database-- because you can pull the records directly, subpoena the relevant parties, etc..
But an honest business person isn't setting up a maze of proxies. Their PII is published, exposing them to crazies, kidnappers, extortionists (including extortionists that use the courts), and suppressing their free expression because any harsh word uttered online can send off someone with a grudge to invade their lives, any unpopular view can unleash a total war on whatever they're connected to.
[It's not even that uncommon for a poster to tick off a HN commenter only to have them come back with irrelevant personal information as means of intimidation, and HN is a lot nicer than much of the internet.]
Where corrupt public figures have been a concern-- apply the transparency directly to the public figures: At least then it's just part of the tradeoff in assuming the responsibility and they can be compensated accordingly (private security is remarkably expensive...).
I don't mean to be presumptuous but this article does a lot of talking about how great UBO registers are at stopping crimes but nearly all of the alleged crimes mentioned in the article have victims that aren't even near the country the UBO register in. As far as I can tell the tax fraud investigation into Gabriele Volpi hasn't gone anywhere since 2018 (and it's not clear at all if UBO registers even aided that investigation). Is there any reason America or Europe shouldn't take Chinese or Russian capital flight money? It deprives your enemies of tax revenue and is good for local real estate. And foreigners can't make political donations.
I just don't understand this new emphasis starting with the FCPA but recently being used as the justification for all kinds of new laws on crimes which in the typical case amount to some third world government employee taking a few million dollars in bribes. How about complaining about carousel fraud? Or the extortion problem in Southern Italy? Or Medicare fraud? It's like local crimes aren't cool enough so they invent new ones.
How about this: Why are we spending man hours investigating and [returning](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/united-states-repatriates-ove...) millions of dollars to Nigeria when they have done almost nothing to stop the massive amount of romance and BEC scams coming from their country? Why are we [fining](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/utstarcom-inc-agrees-pay-15-m...) [companies](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/ericsson-agrees-pay-over-1-bi...) for bribery in China when they pirate American software, steal American intellectual property and turn a blind eye to "research chemical" companies exporting tons of fentanyl? What I am saying is that instead of paying the third world's law enforcement bill for them we should try to stop getting ripped off first.
My personal opinion is that this is a terrible decision. Anonymous speech - which requires privacy - is valuable for democracy; but anonymous power is corrosive to it. So we should treat these two things as mutually exclusive. If you are wielding the power of the state or a monied corporation, you should be surrendering your privacy in the process.