Bill to Stop Doxing of Government Workers Introduced in Senate

The Public Servant Protection Act is a bill designed to protect government workers, officials, and appointees from being targeted at their homes. Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR), along with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and five Republican colleagues, introduced the legislative proposal last week.

In July 2020, federal judge Esther Salas was targeted by a self-identified “anti-feminist” lawyer who went to her home in New Jersey and killed her son and wounded her husband when they answered the door. In response, New Jersey enacted a law in November making it a crime to make public personal addresses and other identifying information about state judges or their families. Such publication is commonly known as “doxing.”

The National Association of Assistant United States Attorneys (NAAUSA) said doxing “is becoming an increasingly common tool for criminal actors seeking revenge against the U.S. justice system in the internet age.” In the last three years, 129 death threats were made against Assistant United States Attorneys or their families according to Justice Department data, NAAUSA said.

The newly introduced Senate bill would give government officials – including federal, state, and tribal officials – the right to request their personal information and that of any immediate family member to be removed from any publically displayed website. Any “interactive computer service” that fails to comply with such a request would be exposed to civil action. The bill would also make it a crime for any person to publically display on the internet the personal information of any government official with the intent to cause the individual “bodily harm or other injury.”  The Cotton bill is more expansive than the bicameral legislation Congressional Democrats introduced in September, which focuses on protecting the federal judicial workforce and their families.

Senator Cotton cited the killing of Judge Salas’s son and “activist mobs” targeting officials at their homes as the reasons he and his colleagues introduced the legislation. “No public servant should be endangered or subject to harassment for doing their job,” he said. “Empowering these officials to keep their personal information private will help protect our protectors and their families,” Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) added.

Public employee groups have begun announcing their support for the bill. “NAAUSA fully endorses the legislation,” said NAAUSA President Larry Leiser, while also suggesting the “legislation could be strengthened” with several revisions including “covering the posting of an address or personal information of a public official or family member done to threaten or intimidate a public officer from performing official duties, or on account of the performance of official duties.”

“The Public Servant Protection Act is a long needed piece of legislation that acknowledges the harmful risks associated with doxing of law enforcement officers and other public employees,” said Larry Cosme, President of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association. “FLEOA appreciates Senator Tom Cotton for leading the effort to protect law enforcement from these violent threats and criminalize the harmful release of private information.”

The bill is also supported by the Major Cities Chiefs Association and the National District Attorneys Association.