The only problem I have with this law is that it should protect everyone, not just first class citizens like judges and law enforcement. Other professions have disgruntled customers that wish to do people harm, especially other high-stakes professions such as doctors. The more we stratify society with special protections for specific classes of people, the more we drive a divide and feeling of disenfranchisement.
Totally agree. Get everyone's details off the internet and you get those who are more equal than others' off as well. You shouldn't get special privileges because you work for the government.
I understand and sympathize with this view. But it seems likely that a federal judge is more likely to be a target of something like this. Mostly because of the nature of their work.
Sure, but if you look at all type work injury/mortality related issues, I doubt federal judge is at the top of the list. What could happen here though is that even though federal judges arn't at that great a risk in overall work related injury or harm, because they are a high authority high yielding power role they might have their risk addressed first and foremost, while others don't.
We like to think that software engineering is a totally run-of-the-mill occupation, but even with the most basic imagination I can think of scenarios where a software engineer would be threatened by kidnapping/torture/murder/blackmail.
Not all software developers are making web-apps for the next big startup, some of them are working on extremely secret, extremely secure, extremely influential, and extremely deadly software, often times employed by extremely powerful entities.
I had a disgruntled ex-customer show up at my place when a startup went under. It wasn’t violent but certainly felt like it could have been. You don’t need to be working on secret deadly software for powerful entities.
You had a disgruntled person upset at a company. That's a threat and is scary. I'm not downplaying workplace violence -- it's a different threat with different precautions needed.
In the judicial situation, you have a specific unstable/desperate person focusing their anger at Judge X. A judge is a symbol of the state, control, and of a specific matter.
The person doesn't accept responsibility for his actions and holds Judge X specifically accountable for his loss of freedom/income/family/etc. In this modern world, you add on the dimension of unstable politically motived disturbed individuals goaded on by various means. We're fortunate as a society in that disturbed people tend to be disorganized and ineffective, but I think that things are changing that make some of these individuals more dangerous.
Without going into the details too much, the person held the founders (us) responsible for their financial loss. They made some anonymous death threats online first but we didn’t take it very seriously.
I’m sure judges and politicians are at higher risk of retribution, no doubt about it. I only argue we’re not immune as engineers and tech founders. Someone who’s deeply disturbed can direct their blame on anyone remotely involved in their life.
> But it seems likely that a federal judge is more likely to be a target
More likely than...? It would really help understand what you're thinking if you'd finish the sentence.
And I hope you aren't thinking "your average person". If we passed a law to address median risk disparities in all the places we could, essentially everything that isn't mandatory would be forbidden.
Was mostly responding to the parent comment of "You shouldn't get special privileges because you work for the government."
Maybe some people should get protection or consideration because of their occupation. Didn't mean to say that federal judges should have more than another occupation or situation that we may want to compare against.
Thanks for pointing out that I could have communicated more effectively, though.!
Exactly and not even that, look at the number of name and shame requests for rosters based on peoples votes? How long until one of those turns into a bad situation?
All data should be equally protected, lest we fall into the all animals are equal except some are more equal fallacy.
The New Jersey statute itself is arguably vague with respect to what constitutes "risk" and an intent to cause harm. Such arbitrary laws give law enforcement and prosecutors significant discretion and open the door for abuse to such an extent that I could see this being used to violate peoples' First Amendment rights. Another unconstitutional law out of New Jersey, color me shocked. :o
The public should be able to hold peaceful protests and hold public officials accountable.
Because unlike the most influential private individuals, they live in homes with sidewalks - not large gated compounds with their own security details, both designed to make sure the public don't get any chance whatsoever to protest.
Or is that somehow different? If they're politically influential - why, exactly?
Practically, it would mean that you'd have to have a police presence there, wouldn't it? Or are you going to assume that the mob will always play nice, and never decide to storm the house?
Absolutely correct, furthermore not only should the public be protected, but they should also be allowed to request an audit of who's querying their information. I had a (low-ranking) member of law enforcement run my plate and send a harassing letter to my family some years back. While it's fortunate nobody in my family was shot by a nutjob, I wasn't able to find out who it was until I ran into him by chance some time later writing a parking ticket (he was only a parking enforcement official).
I commented about this experience more in depth on reddit[1] and also brought up that federal judges have the US Marshals Service to protect them, and our state judges have county sheriff departments to protect them.
I don't think "first class" citizens is the right classification. There are certain fields/work that are inherently more risky or serve a critical component of society. We are seeing this exact thing pan out now with medical care--doctors and nurses are precious resources and if we don't protect them, we put our overall societal health at risk. Same is true for judges--if you don't protect them, you put the rule of law at risk which is a way of protecting everyone.
Equal protection under the law and freedom of speech.
It's a terrible story being told here and I am saddened by her loss but this judge and you, and I, and everyone else are peers.
Judges may be interesting and special for brief periods of time while they adjudicate on their bench but out in the world they are normal people just like everyone else. If privacy laws are inadequate for them then they are inadequate for all of us.
I can't imagine a situation where I would know, much less disseminate, the address of a judge but that is without any question speech protected by the first amendment.
I think it's worth noting that attacks on judges is probably more detrimental to society than most murders. It's similar for elected office, which is one reason we have these special protections.
That said, I agree with you. As Judge Salas says herself in this article, this is about the foundations of democracy. Peerage is certainly that too.
Also, since prosecutors and police are covered by this law, we need to think of this as mostly relating to law enforcement. They are the vast majority of this population.
Meanwhile, privacy is obviously an area that needs 21st century attention. We should at least get a reason why we don't get these protections too. Extending their rights to privacy separately from everyone else doesn't sit right with me.
> Equal protection under the law and freedom of speech.
The reality is that certain types of people are in fact more important than others. POTUS gets secret service protection -- something that most citizens won't get.
Does a federal judge deserve extra protection under the law than an average citizen? Probably. It's just a question of how much -- precisely for the reasons given in the article.
Now whether or not we should all have that right may be a question worth asking, but it seems pretty certain that federal judges are worthy of this kind of protection.
"The reality is that certain types of people are in fact more important than others. POTUS gets secret service protection -- something that most citizens won't get."
I'm not talking about that - and I have no problem if judges (or anyone else) have extra bodyguards or special limousines.
I can say anything I like about the president. The same is true for these judges. The equal protection I am speaking of is not what kind of armor their car has, but what I am, and am not, allowed to say to or about them.
Go ahead and say anything you like about them. Your political opinions are entitled to the highest order of protection under the 1st Amendment.
There's little reason to say that "X judge lives at Y address" is equivalently deserving of protection. We might choose to protect your saying so out of an abundance of caution, to avoid a slippery slope whereby we restrict too much speech. But the idea they're equivalently valuable things to protect in their own right needs a serious defense.
"We might choose to protect your saying so out of an abundance of caution, to avoid a slippery slope whereby we restrict too much speech. But the idea they're equivalently valuable things to protect in their own right needs a serious defense."
Investigative journalism revealing corruption.
It might not be the address per se but it will be similarly identifying and revealing information about a persons day to day life. This information would be communicated both while reporting the story, between reporters and other sources, etc., as well as exposed in the journalistic product itself.
Or, given five seconds of thought, that was the first, obvious thing that came to mind.
But there you go: you yourself just distinguished it, acknowledging that the address itself isn't what needs to be published in order to preserve society's interest in free publication about corruption.
So then what is the solution? If their life is not more important than everybody else’s then why do they get extra protection? Why can’t we extend the same protection to all? Why do we have special cases? Why can’t an individual, and a judge, be entitled to the same protection?
Their life is more important to protect from particular threats than everyone else's, because they're in a position where we expect them to make rulings based on their expertise and judgment rather than their fear or concern for popularity, and because they are more frequently in a position to garner someone's resentment or hatred than most of us are.
Just because we're all equal in the eyes of God doesn't mean our society should pretend the world isn't complex.
You're being disingenuous. There are different ways of measuring value, so when someone says "yes" you pounce on that even though that particular equivalency/measurement isn't the whole story when it comes to how we organize society.
No, you’re missing my point! To you, what is she? Some random person. Her life is not more important. If she’s scared for her life, then she should find a new job. Giving protection to certain people but not others is the definition of elitism. She’s a human just like the rest, is scared for her life just like the rest, yet only she gets extra protection? What you’re saying, pretty well directly, is she’s somehow better than the rest of us.
She is not some random person to me. She is someone I have granted (through my government) a position of power and trust, which exposes her to certain risks which I want to protect her from, because being scared for one's life is not a quality that I want in people adjudicating legal disputes and criminal sentences.
Supply and demand is a separate thing. People stockpiling these mask has led to this shortage. What you are suggesting with regard to protection is a universal right.
And yea, if a Dr is so scared of contracting a disease in a profession specifically putting them in this situation, they should also quit their job. Certain jobs require a strong stomach for risk. Don’t take it if you can’t handle it.
Also let’s not forget she not only didn’t teach her son to check who’s at the door before opening it, she can also very easily defend herself using her second amendment rights. Just like the rest of us.
How much First Amendment history and jurisprudence do you know? There's a naive view that speech is speech, and it's all protected, but that is an absolutely radical view compared to what "free speech" has meant for most of the post-Enlightenment period.
The comment said that it is without any question speech protected by the 1st Amendment. My comment is obviously following up on that.
I do not think it is clear that publishing a judge's address is the kind of speech that is necessarily protected by the 1st Amendment, and certainly not the kind that would have been considered inherently worthy of protection around when the 1st Amendment was written. And I suspect the claim that it is "without question" is a naive one.
I will answer. Publishing the address of an individual is absolutely protected by the First Amendment unless it can be reasonably deemed a true threat, or an incitement to violence, under the appropriate judicial tests.
You don't think a job which massively inconveniences petty and violent criminals - some of whom will be part of larger crime families and networks - is inherently risky?
> You don't think a job which massively inconveniences petty and violent criminals - some of whom will be part of larger crime families and networks - is inherently risky?
Those jobs are, but regular people have dangerous stalkers, are subject to harassment at their homes, or just want the peace of mind of some extra privacy, too.
No one's arguing that judges shouldn't have protection, it's just that the same protections should be available to everybody else. Limiting these projections to judges & police officers only really helps marketers and sleazy peoplesearch websites, etc.
I probably would think it was too. But instead of just guessing I looked it up. It's not. Not even close.
It's so far away from being risky, in fact, that having people in the field intentionally lying means I think they are lying for a specific reason and I think people should be concerned about that.
I'm not saying we shouldn't protect them. But why not extend these protections to the general public?
I used the term first class citizens because people in power tend to grant themselves more of it over time or have privileges (official or unofficial) which benefit them, and not just to protect them. For example, how often do you hear about police being given a ticket? Many laws explicitly except the people in Congress as well.
I see your point. "First class" is loaded, but I don't this is just about risk. That's evident in the content of the law and in both judge Salas' explanation for it.
"The federal government has a responsibility to protect all federal judges because our safety is foundational to our great democracy"
Indeed it is. It's not just about likelihood of an attack occurring. It's about potential consequences. Killing judges is destabilizing... both directly and via reaction. They are an actually weakening to the governing system as a whole.
We do actually have totally separate ways of protecting elected officials, including unique laws. They are, essentially, "first class citizens." It's because attacks are likely and because the consequences of such attacks are dangerous.
That said, I sympathize with the OP. Separate laws for the specific protection of certain classes of citizens is well... also relevant to the foundations of democracies. Why can't these protections^ be extended to everyone?
"“Daniel’s Law,” which prohibits the distribution of personal information, including home addresses and phone numbers, for judges, prosecutors and law enforcement personnel."
For example, pass a law making the distribution of PII unlawful if the intent of the distribution is to cause violence or unrest. The law itself would cover everyone evenly.
With a few sentence enhancement clauses, the same statute that protects everyone equally can add additional terms of incarceration or mandatory minimums for judges and law enforcement.
There are well-established exceptions that include incitement to violence. Wikipedia's summary:
"Categories of speech that are given lesser or no protection by the First Amendment include obscenity (as determined by the Miller test), fraud, child pornography, speech integral to illegal conduct, speech that incites imminent lawless action, and regulation of commercial speech such as advertising."
Yup. Thankfully in a criminal investigation, the burden of proof for "intent" is typically on the prosecutor. I'd rather give the prosecutor a harder time than a defendant.
> There are certain fields/work that are inherently more risky or serve a critical component of society.
You mean like grocery delivery drivers and cashiers?
What about virologists? Or what about all of the PhD students in Field X, where X is not virology but some other thing that will be at the focal point of the next crisis but which everyone today thinks is unnecessary and figures we should stop over-produce PhDs for? 12 months ago you could probably come to a place like HN, complain that you can't find a good paying job with your phd in coronaviruses, and be told that academia is a pyramid scheme, that no one owes you anything and you should just learn to code and go work on a labor law arbitrage product at the center of an even bigger pyramid scheme.
Since we're on a technology forum, what about the engineers who implement the software/hardware that's used to manufacture PPE, or run simulations to help design mRNA vaccines, or write firmware for the machinery and devices used to mass produce vaccines? Or even more mundane but none-the-less useful stuff like designing and implementing intuitive UX for no-contact payment methods?
Anyways, what's the point of drawing this line between "useful resource" and "everyone else"? What if the role of government were to treat humans citizens with natural rights that should be protected by law, instead of as economic resources to be deployed?
Also, have you asked any essential workers how they feel about being treated as a useful resource? Instead of, you know, a human with natural and legal rights?
Perhaps judges don't need special treatment. Maybe, perhaps, personal privacy is incredibly important component of human dignity.
I hate seeing this with journalists too arguing that they should get special protections and rights. Everyone should have the protections and rights. Not just judges, not just journalists.
It's a worthy statement, but at the same time, this is not the same thing.
If we didn't provide special protections for judges, 1/2 of them would be dead.
Organized Crime is a very powerful thing, they kill people all the time for a lot less and witness intimidation is rampant.
Judges take on a much greater responsibility than most others.
If there's an opportunity for 'equity' in this special equation, it may be for those who provide testimony in the courts protections. Because they are not protected nearly as well, they are easy targets:
"a study of witnesses appearing in criminal courts in Bronx County, New York revealed that 36 percent of witnesses had been directly threatened; among those who had not been threatened directly, 57 percent feared reprisals" [1]
Imagine if people weren't afraid of retribution against gangs and organized criminals, the world would be a different place.
The US govnernment already spends $$$ to give its president the kind of protection that can be only dreamed by ordinary citizens. Bulletproof cars, Air Force One, a gang of bodyguards who are trained to put themselves between you and the bullet. Sometimes they literally block streets and your right to peacefully move or assemble. Your tax dollars at work.
Why such unfairness?
Because the world is full of bad actors and crazies dreaming of killing the POTUS, and it pays off in the long run to not have the president killed off in that fashion.
So what's the reason for not extending the proposed protections to all?
Also, the difference here is that the items you describe for the president are proactive measures based on credible threats. Not all judges have credible threats against them. This also wouldn't be a proactive measure - it's just a piece of paper.
Another problem that I have is that this is once again allowing law enforcement to further damage others, which they absolutely and totally refuse to take responsibility for.
Shoot someone who took a jab at you 6 times with a strong suspicion and history of racist motive ?
1) You're a private citizen: death sentence. Hundreds of thousands to millions in damages to be paid. And you can be DAMN sure nobody's will ever grant you any kind of clemency.
2) You're a police officer: Not only do you go free, you don't have to pay any damages and the incident is stricken from your record ... You MAY be asked to resign if protests get too bad.
If by some magic, there are damages to be paid, they will not be extracted from the perpetrators of the crime.
This, and worse, is what these protections will also be used for. Defending law enforcement personnel from the consequences of their own mistakes, their own racism, from attacking their ex-girlfriends or ex-wives, ...
Not everyone has the same risks. Take child protective services workers as an example I’m familiar with.
These folks can be systematically targeted because of their job, which is much harder to protect yourself against. I understand your thought process, but it seems unfair to not provide basic protections to people working on our behalf.
Then covering you too would be an approximately zero cost to that law. Yet it would cover retired judges, nearly-judges, people who aren't judges but have similar problems we haven't thought of yet, and have the moral advantage of treating everyone the same.
That's just a reason why you aren't supporting the protections for everyone. What's your reason for opposing it being applied to everyone?
Just because you feel there is no risk of a disgruntled person targeting you, doesn't mean that there are other people who don't have risk in other jobs (like doctors or managers).
