I don't think someone fleeing an abusive partner would necessarily benefit as much from knowing the abuser's location as much as the abuser would benefit from the victim's location. The information would be symmetric, but the value from it might not be.

Maybe the abuser has a car and victim is relying on mass transit. Or maybe the victim's best bet is staying with a friend whose residence is unknown to the abuser.

Agreed. I think even arguing this point shows a lack of understanding of how these cases work. Believing that information equality is the same as power equality is a fallacy.

That said, information equality does suggest a marginally higher baseline of power-sharing than gross information inequality is able to achieve.

In the case of witness protection: The witness does not know every member of the mafia, but the mafia knows the witness. There is inherently an asymmetry of power in such situations.

The abused wouldn't be able to track their abuser's allies without knowing who they all were.

But if any of the abuser's allies did anything to the abused, they could be easily identified and tracked down; this could act as a deterrent.

If we're not capping the level of abuse it could easily be too late though. Let's take it to the extreme, somebody wants to kill you and you have no choice but to broadcast your location to everybody. Some people receiving that data, you don't know who, are happy to do the killing for the person who wants to kill you. Afterward they can be identified and tracked down, but at this extremity it's too late.

The punishment for killing is the deterrent.

For people that have rational minds. What about people who are irrational or have some sort of mental illness? I guess that's just a "too bad" for the person who is now dead?

Yes its too bad when I'm dead. I could done anything I could have done to prevent that but there will always be somebody who are irrational or have some sort mental illness or anybody who could eventually find a way to kill me if they really want to. This is happen in open or private society.

You're being ridiculous. So if someone has someone else they fear will hurt then, there is no reason whatever that that dangerous person shouldn't know their whereabouts because in principle it is possible for the potential victim to know their whereabouts?

Assuming most people on HN are good programmers, there is clearly no linkage between a person's ability to write RoR code and how to reason about normal things in the world. I'm just being honest.

Assuming that the location is based on tracking a mobile phone, the aggressor could quite easily leave their phone at home and if they need a phone take an unregistered one.

The problem with open information is that those with evil intent can take precautions to ensure their activities aren't monitored.

This is not the problem with open society in itself. The same problem happen in private society. Anybody motivated enough can hack through your secret given enough effort.

"Given enough effort" is the key there. Just because someone can break into your house given enough effort doesn't mean you leave your doors off the hinges.

I would not even need to lock my doors.

I'm very happy for you that you feel that you not in a position where that is a risky step. Are you able to fathom that others may not be in that same situation, or are you content to be blasé to their differing circumstances?