Study finds judges’ home addresses remain online despite federal privacy law

As threats against federal judges continue to climb, a new report shows that the Daniel Anderl Judicial Security and Privacy Act is failing to block easy access to their home addresses.

The federal Anderl Act and “Daniel’s Law,” a New Jersey statute that preceded it, were inspired by the 2020 murder of a federal judge’s son. The report shows that the state law, which authorizes individuals to sue data brokers, is much more effective.

“We’ve have had more success under Daniel’s Law in New Jersey than anyone else in the United States has ever had at suppressing sensitive personal information, and that’s what the report shows in empirical data, black and white,” said Matthew Adkisson, one of the report’s authors.

Adkisson is president of Atlas Data Privacy Corp., which helps “at-risk” public servants remove their personal information from the Internet. Adkisson filed nearly 200 lawsuits against data brokers under Daniel’s Law, and the litigation remains pending.

The September 1 report, “Silence is Not Compliance: Evidence from Two Judicial-Privacy Regimes,” is co-authored by John Muffler, a former chief inspector for the U.S. Marshals Service who offers security training to Florida judges.

The authors searched for the home addresses of 100 federal judges on 50 websites audited by “DeleteMe,” the data removal service that contracts with the federal judiciary.

The authors found that nearly a third contained a judge’s home address. Half of judge’s addresses appeared on unaudited websites, suggesting the federal act has some value as a deterrent.

Last week, a Brennan Center for Justice report noted that the U.S. Marshals Service logged 564 credible threats against federal judges last fiscal year, up from 403 in FY 2023.

Adkisson said his study was prompted by a conversation with U.S. District Judge Esther Salas, Daniel Anderl’s mother and a national advocate for a fair and impartial judiciary and judicial security. On the day of the tragedy, a disgruntled litigant disguised a delivery driver came to Salas’ New Brunswick home, killed her 20-year-old son, and seriously wounded her husband, Mark Anderl.

Assuming the federal law was working better than the state law, Salas asked Adkisson why the state law generated 184 lawsuits, and the federal law required no enforcement actions.

“I’m sitting there with her, and it’s not an easy thing to say to a federal judge, especially her, but I had to say, ‘I believe you are wrong,’” Adkisson said.

The federal law, “for the most part,” requires the Department of Justice to act against data brokers who fail to honor a privacy request, Adkisson said. Some federal judges in Florida have expressed frustration with the federal law, saying no matter how many times they request their personal data to be removed, it keeps reappearing.

Adkisson says he doesn’t blame them for feeling frustrated.

“I think we rediscovered what a bunch of Harvard professors could have rolled their eyes and told us long ago,” he said. “If you enforce something, you’ll get compliance, if you don’t, you won’t.”

The New Jersey Law gives individual public officials a “private right of action,” or the ability to sue data brokers who fail to comply with a privacy request within 10 days.

Daniel’s Law also sets a $1,000 penalty per violation.

“Our system is full of private rights of action, you get in a car accident, you sue, there’s nothing novel or rare,” Adkisson says. “It just typically has not been applied to privacy laws.”

Florida lawmakers filed a version of Daniel’s Law earlier this year. On January 5, Sen. Jennifer Bradley, a Fleming Island attorney, filed SB 1064. Rep. Juan Carlos Porras, a Miami business owner, filed the companion, HB 1027.

The bills gave judges, police, elected officials, and other public servants the right to sue data brokers who failed within 10 days to scrub their personal information. Both bills died when they failed to get a single committee hearing.

Data brokers argue Daniel’s Law violates their First Amendment rights. Other critics say it prevents journalists from holding public officials accountable.

On August 12, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled in Atlas Data Privacy Corp. v. We Inform LLC, that companies that fail to comply with a privacy request cannot be sued for negligence.

However, justices reserved the question of whether the law violates the First Amendment to the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals.

“Whether Daniel’s Law is constitutional – regardless of what the Court has decided today – is for the Third Circuit to determine,” wrote Justice Fabiana Pierre-Louis.

Adkisson expects a ruling within 30 days.

Adkisson is convinced that there is a way to protect public officials without violating the First Amendment.

“From where we sit today, this is a solvable problem, meaning we can get an individual’s home address and contact information off of web where almost any attacker would be able to find it.”

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