Report: Personal info on federal judges is widely accessible online, leading to safety risks

More than half of U.S. appellate court judges examined in a recent study were shown to have their personal data, including home addresses, phone numbers, names of relatives and case rulings listed on people search sites.

An estimated 56% of judges studied, who all work in the country’s 12 regional circuit courts, have likely had personal information listed on the sites, which are run by the largely unregulated data broker industry, according to Incogni, a data deletion company.

Their research also showed that about 50 out of the 270 judges studied appear on five or more data broker sites. 

It is not difficult to track down individuals’ addresses and phone numbers, the study suggests. Researchers producing the Incogni study were able to pinpoint the data using nothing more than the name, age, city and state of the judges. Some sites had small mistakes in things like judges’ names and ages, and the researchers were able to use an algorithm to match judges in these cases.

The findings highlight risks judges face as they increasingly are targeted by doxxing, threats and violent retaliation.

In the aftermath of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s ruling against the Trump administration earlier this month, her sister was reportedly targeted with a bomb threat.

Legislation to fight the problem is gaining momentum.

The son of a New Jersey federal judge was shot to death by a disgruntled lawyer at her home in July 2020, prompting the state to enact legislation referred to as Daniel’s Law requiring data brokers to quickly remove personal data belonging to law enforcement, including judges, from their sites within 10 days upon request. 

The law includes stiff financial penalties for data brokers who do not comply.

The Vermont House of Representatives passed a similar bill on Friday. It now heads to the state’s senate.

Monique Priestley, the lawmaker behind the legislation, said via email that she will continue fighting for protections from data brokers. Last year, broader data broker legislation she spearheaded passed both state chambers, but died when Vermont’s governor failed to sign the bill.

“Vermont will not back down to corporate intimidation or lobbyist pressure,” she said.

Atlas Data Privacy, a consumer privacy company which filed lawsuits against 118 data brokers who allegedly violated the New Jersey law last February, has lobbied heavily to support passage of the Vermont legislation, facing what its leadership called a “horde” of industry lobbyists. 

“Vermont is now the national battleground for a simple question: will states provide the basic privacy rights that judges and other at-risk public servants need in order to protect themselves and their families?" Matt Adkisson, president of Atlas, said via email.

In December 2022, President Joe Biden signed a federal version of Daniel’s Law which covers federal judges and Supreme Court justices, a cohort which the Vermont law would expand upon.

Personal safety concerns are the “daily reality for most judges, yet their personal data is not just accessible online; it’s been commercialized,” Darius Belejevas, head of Incogni, said in a statement. 

A separate study published in November by scholars who surveyed 398 state judges found that more than half had been threatened and 2% had been attacked. 

Eighty-one percent of the judges who had not previously been threatened or attacked expressed worry about their information being posted online, according to that study.