Edit: the Washington Post article on this says “ The general public won’t have access to the ownership data, a disappointment to anti-corruption campaigners, who say public scrutiny would help combat criminal activity.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2020/12/11/anonymou...
I don't see anything in the bill language that restricts the disclosure, much less makes an unauthorized disclosure a crime.
The is the problem with "anti-corruption" efforts, is that always hurts people that have legitimate reasons or simply desire to live anonymous lives
My parents and grandparents told me about the days before centralized documentation. A birth certificate was sufficient documentation, and of course those could be changed. One could lie about his birthday and not get caught. These days, no one is a person at all unless the government says he is, and even then, he is only the person the government says he is: I knew someone who was a transgender; she couldn't call herself a woman in many contexts until the government said so. This idea of constantly proving that you are who you claim to be, backed by government verification, strikes me as a bad direction to go.
This was not a tool "only for the wealthy" and since the limits of the law are fairly low before the law no longer applies it is clear this law IS NOT targeting "the wealthy"
Presumably this law still will be easily avoided by the sufficiently wealthy-- some kind of finance structure involving loans and whatever where a nominee is the legal beneficial owner. ... and outright criminals will just break it, because its not like violations of it will be detected quickly and if they are detected the criminals will already have worse problems.
Or just purchase a 'real' business that engages in some unrelated activity to own the property... Which is something just about every money launderer already does! It just has to be over the size threshold in this bill, essentially leaving this avenue open only to the wealthy.
Modern US Society is losing alot of things that used to be a foundation. Privacy is one of them.
In general people today agree with the "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear" rhetoric, generally accepting that "only bad people" want or desire privacy, and the government is only their to "protect good people from bad people"
It is all a lie ofcourse but that is where we are as a society, and I am not seeing anything on the horizon to change this
Largely we (the US) are moving to a more Authoritarian, collectivist society, leaving behind our Individualist libertarian roots