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Should Doxxing Be Illegal?

Privacy

from the questions,-questions dept

Thu, Nov 14th 2019 12:42pm -

There has been a debate over the past few years about the legality of “doxxing,” which would loosely be defined as identifying individuals and/or their personal information which they’d prefer to remain secret. This is coming up in a variety of contexts, including effort to unveil the whistleblower who first called attention to President Trump’s questionable call with Ukraine’s President. However, we also noted in passing, last week, that the new privacy bill from Reps. Zoe Lofgren and Anna Eshoo contained an anti-doxxing clause, which states:

Whoever uses a channel of interstate or foreign commerce to knowingly disclose an individual?s personal information?

(1) with the intent to threaten, intimidate, or harass any person, incite or facilitate the commission of a crime of violence against any person, or place any person in reasonable fear of death or serious bodily injury; or

(2) with the intent that the information will be used to threaten, intimidate, or harass any person, incite or facilitate the commission of a crime of violence against any person, or place any person in reasonable fear of death or serious bodily injury,

shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.

At a first pass, you can certainly understand the thinking here. If you’re looking to disclose someone’s personal information in order to “threaten, intimidate, or harass” someone, that feels problematic. But, then again, what is meant by “intimidate or harass” in this situation could matter quite a bit. What got me thinking about this again was another news report, about people doxxing members of a defunct neo-nazi online forum:

The metadata of a now-defunct neo-Nazi message board that is considered the birthplace of several militant organizations?among them the U.S.-based terror group Atomwaffen Division?was dumped onto the internet by what appears to be anti-fascist activists.

The site, IronMarch, is widely associated with the rise of the new wave of white supremacist accelerationst groups advocating for armed insurgency against society. The site ran from 2011 to 2017 and garnered more than 150,000 posts while active. The dump of its inner workings includes the login names of its former members and their associated emails and IP addresses.

For fairly obvious reasons, many would likely argue that we should want those people identified. And while the report notes that efforts are underway to try to track down the identities of people who were active on this forum, and it could be argued that the intent behind figuring out who was on this forum is to “intimidate or harass” those individuals (for being Nazis), I think many people who might otherwise support these kinds of privacy laws might take issue with the idea that revealing these individuals as Nazis and/or Nazi sympathizers should be illegal.

And that, again, gets at part of the issue with legislating privacy. Context matters quite a bit, and it’s pretty difficult to write context into the law. Yes, doxxing is often used in negative ways to harm, intimidate or silence people. But it can also be used to reveal people who are doing crazy stuff hidden behind a shield of anonymity.

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anonymouse says:

Re: The Irony

Don’t forget the associated threats to employment, life and limb if one is accused of being a Nazi with or without corroborative evidence.

It’s almost as if these people who do the outing were bad guys [in the non-gender specific use of the term]

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Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: The Irony

Yes, and many lawyers do this as part of a larger campaign to dehumanize litigants (particularly pro ses) by paying "journalists" and hackers to dox, harass, and ridicule them.

Karma will catch up to them, since they keep doing the same thing over and over and too many people have too much to gain by ratting them out.

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Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:2 Re:

I don’t know whether I can meet your arbitrarily specific goal (lawyers, payments, 5 instances), but Donald Segretti is known to have passed false information about people as part of Nixon’s "dirty tricks". It’s been plausibly alleged that Russia dumped data to Wikileaks to cause trouble. Valerie Plame. The whole modern idea of "fake news". And I’ll bet the Nazis will eventually latch onto the idea of spreading false accusations if they haven’t already—possibly even false accusations of Nazism, just so nobody knows who’s really "with them".

Anonymous Coward says:

A lot of doxxing is already illegal. There are many many many laws that could be applied and that’s just one more. Stalking laws, the CFAA, harassment laws, laws about outing informants, laws about outing whistleblowers, laws about outing intelligence assets, laws about outing the military for reprisal, espionage, and I can think of more and more. I’m not even a lawyer.

Unless the people involved are involved with genuine lawful activity such as journalism, petitioning the government ect doxxing is a very risky business.

James Burkhardt (profile) says:

Re: risky business

This comment really feels like it was written to engage the headline, rather than the article’s substance.

It starts off with a solid note about various ways obtaining the information is illegal (rather than the doxxing itself), or limited ways in which doxxing might be illegal for protected individuals in connection relating to national security (of which whistle blowers are not actually a protected class in this fashion). Then it ends with a point that seems to refrence nothing in the article, as the doxxing presented as good could indeed be considered operating as journalism. So i’m really not sure what the takeaway of that point is meant to be.

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Anon says:

Re: The trouble is...

Except maybe for the law about intelligence agents (Valerie and Scooter, anyone?) all these require proving some form of intent. At what point does something shift from newsworthiness to intending to provoke harassment. I too, just out curiosity, would like to know who the whistleblower is – but not at the expense of his/her livelihood and safety. But then would we end up with a situation where everyone around the situation knows whodunnit, but the press cannot report on it?

Reminds me of the situation in a small community where someone is charged with a sexual crime and the identity is not published to protect the victim. But in the small town o high school or church, everyone knows who it was.

Unless someone say "Here’s who it is, now go take a steaming dump on his doorstep" where the intent to harass is obvious – how do you prove intent? Every news article mentions the name of the person, and sometimes where they live, or work, or some identifiable information.

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Bruce C. says:

Context?

I’m not sure that disclosing personal info for the purpose of harassment or inciting harassment should be legal even if the target is a neo-nazi.

I do think that there needs to be a distinction between publicly available information that can be gleaned online or obtained from a directory service for a nominal fee vs. information that’s obtained from privately held sources through subterfuge/hacking/bribery or other illegal means. Basically, if you’re just saving people a bit of work to do their own digging, should that really qualify as doxxing in a criminal or civil liability sense?

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Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Context?

I agree. With you, not Mike.

For fairly obvious reasons, many would likely argue that we should want those people identified.

Many would be wrong. Even total assholes still have a right to privacy. Leave law enforcement to the law enforcers. Anti-doxxing is about preventing vigilanteism. Leave off the ridiculous "think of the children"-style arguments that do nothing but erode freedoms.

btr1701 (profile) says:

Re: Re: Context?

For fairly obvious reasons, many would likely argue that we should want those people identified.

Many would be wrong.

Indeed. Masnick seems to be suggesting that we put the brakes on this legislation because it could have the unforeseen consequence of keeping him and others from being able to harass the bad guys who ‘deserve’ to be harassed for their speech.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Context?

I’m not sure that disclosing personal info for the purpose of harassment or inciting harassment should be legal even if the target is a neo-nazi.

The other problem: how does anyone really know if harassment is the intent? What’s the difference between me posting a Nazi’s phone number so everyone can fuck with them, or me posting their number so everyone can reason with them to try to change their mind? (The amount of care someone puts into the exact wording of the infodrop, I suppose.)

The SOPA protests caused a record number of people to call poltical offices, overwhemling them. The line between that and a harassment campaign is pretty thin.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re: Context?

What you’re talking about is what people would use the information for. Yeah, it’ll be easy enough to categorize most of the specific calls, letters, etc. that result, but how do we know what the person posting the information intended? That’s what the proposed law says will matter.

If I write "Here’s Neuhitler’s phone number, let him know what you think about immigration"—is that an attempt at harassment? I mean, I’d expect a lot of people to call, and it’s the internet, so I know some of them will be assholes. That phone number will quickly be blacklisted by the pizza delivery companies. But how would one prove any specific intent?

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:3 Context?

Calling legislators offices to ask them to oppose a bill is plainly protected by the first amendment.

I didn’t know you meant that specific example. Yes, of course that’s protected, but what about telling everyone else on the internet to call them? That should be protected, but the proposed law leaves it a gray area. If you say "call them to express your opposition" you’re probably OK. If you say "send them some black faxes", maybe not.

btr1701 (profile) says:

Re: Context?

I’m not sure that disclosing personal info for the purpose of harassment or inciting harassment should be legal even if the target is a neo-nazi.

And the same SJWs that do it to ‘Nazis’– the modern definition of which seems to be ‘anyone who disagrees with my politics– will shit themselves with outrage and claim invasion of privacy if it’s done to them or their violent masked Antifa cohorts.

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Anonymous Coward says:

The government does it

when they publish lists of sex offenders AFTER they have been released from prison.

Before someone says that I am defending sex offenders, you can stop right there. My thoughts are that if a convicted sex offender is still a danger to society, don’t let them out of jail.

So, if this new law is passed, does that mean that every police officer will be required to arrest every other police officer for following state laws re: publishing sex offender lists which is, in essence, doxxing?

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That Anonymous Coward (profile) says:

"with the intent"

With the presumed intent seems like a better line.
One can not know the inner workings of another’s mind.

Did Alex Jones MEAN to have his fan base send death threats to the Sandy Hook Parents?? Or were those messages just collateral damage in his shtick to get money from ignorant people?

Did that YA author MEAN to have her fanbase figure out whom she was talking about & have them descend upon her to the point where she removed all of her social media accounts for daring to think her books weren’t that good for college students? Or was she just so upset over 1 tiny quote in 1 tiny paper she needed to speak out?

Did Ken White MEAN to hand out JLVD’s office address & phone number to doxx him? Or was he just sharing the email as it was sent?

Does giving out easily found information so someone can contact an elected offical cross the line if 1 person out of 500 who saw it decided to call in a bomb threat instead of saying they disagreed with a proposal?

Does taking photos of people in public at a protest rise to that level or should a school have not caved to the possible trauma for others finding out they had been at a protest?

Doxxing is a tool, it can be used for good, it can be used for evil.
The problem is trying to understand the intent.

I totes doxxed some bad lawyer types, & despite what they told courts, I never misused what I knew.

I totes doxxed Craig Brittian & got his nudes he posted online.
If I released them would I be violating the proposed law?
Even if you could find them online for yourself easily if you were so motivated?

Trying to pass a quickly written law to "fix" the possibility of the Whistleblower being outed is doing the same thing over & over and expecting a different result. The problem is larger than the whistleblower & trying to quickly do something always leads to bad laws that sometimes we can’t fix. See Also: Patriot Act, Bill allowing 9/11 Families to sue the Kingdom (despite there being no actual legal recourse possible).

Tanner Andrews (profile) says:

Re: Re: Overlooked possibility

Yeah this bill can only have two states: toothless as it essentially requires a signed confession or unconstitutional.

Not so. It appears to be both at the same time, depending on the county in which the observer finds himself. Viewed from a county with a hammer-head of a state’s attorney, it is unconstitutional content-based regulation of speech. Viewed from a county with a more thoughtful state’s attorney, it will be a toothless waste of paper and ink in the statute books.

nasch (profile) says:

Re: Re:

With the presumed intent seems like a better line. One can not know the inner workings of another’s mind.

Intent I think is a pretty well established legal concept, and there are certainly ways to demonstrate it.

https://www.fraudconferencenews.com/home/2017/6/20/the-challenge-of-proving-intent

https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/general-vs-specific-intent.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intention_(criminal_law)

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Anonymous Coward says:

"But it can also be used to reveal people who are doing crazy stuff hidden behind a shield of anonymity. "

Too subjective, and a good example of why DOXing should be considered stalking, or prosecuted as an invasion of privacy.

Of course now that the DOXers have been Doxed themselves, it’s inevitable before someone turns the internet fight the nerds started into a jungle fight the nerds lose. Some of these twerps have been asking for it for a very long time, and the lawyers who put them up to it are fools if they think no one has caught on.

Given the mass scale of Doxxing, and the supposed "craziness" of those targeted, karma, through the legal system or otherwise, would appear inevitable.

CopBlaster (profile) says:

If Doxing were Banned Uncle Sam Would Be Public Enemy Number One

This statute looks similar to 18 U.S.C. 119 which prohibits making personal information about law enforcement publicly available. The key language is that law is the "makes publicly available" part because most doxing uses information made publicly available by the government in public records.

In this proposed statute I would argue that one cannot disclose what has already been disclosed by the government in public records, so an affirmative defense would be that you are simply disclosing publicly available information that has already been disclosed.

This would bring the enforceable arm of the statute into play only when the information has never before been disclosed, which is almost never. To convict someone they would have to prove that the personal information has never been disclosed before and that would be really hard.

My legal team successfully argued this to make a federal prosecutor back off when he suggested charging me with violating 18 U.S.C. 119 for doxing local, state, and federal law enforcement personnel. My defense was that I had gotten the information from public records and therefore I had not made it publicly available even though I made it easier for the public to find.

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Tanner Andrews (profile) says:

Re: If Doxing were Banned Uncle Sam Would Be Public Enemy Number

18 U.S.C. 119 which prohibits making personal information about law enforcement publicly available

If this statute were in fact constitutional, then trying to keep local government in line by checking to see whether certain officers were getting a break on their property appraisals would be against the law.

Not that property appraisers would ever collude with other officials to shift the burden. And in fact I do not have reason to believe that they are doing it in this county. But in Dade or Broward? I would be surprised if they were not doing it.

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Anonymous Coward says:

My opinion is pretty simple.

1) Threats, harassment, and facilitating violent crimes are already illegal acts. (Especially over the internet. Across state lines means the Feds can get involved.) A specific anti-doxxing law would most likely not be needed to punish someone who doxxes with intent to cause harm.

2) If there is a legitimate connection between an anonymous person and an illegal act, it should be reported to police (or, if the police aren’t an option, other reputable investigators) who can perform an actual investigation and confirm the connection with hard evidence, or deny the connection with evidence to the contrary (or merely a lack of evidence; we are supposed to be an nation of innocence until proven guilty.)

3) If there is no legitimate connection between an anonymous person and an illegal act, by revealing their information, any wrongs righted are likely to be outweighed by new wrongs created. Punishing the victim of mistaken identity, punishing the victim of a stolen identity, the corrupt punishing the honest, or further punishing a wrong already atoned for are all possible outcomes.

Conclusion: Though I object to doxxing, even towards potentially violent d-bags, I see little that would improve by making doxxing itself illegal, as the people who do it to cause harm can already be prevented or punished.

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Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re:

Er, no. I would suggest re-reading the proposed law excerpt, at the least, before proposing a claim that bold…

Google would not be disclosing the information with intent to harm, harass, threaten, etc.

Google would be archiving information previously disclosed, along with all the other information it archives, automatically, without any intent to do anything except store and retrieve information. (Okay, and to sell ads, because hey, it’s Google, after all.)

CopBlaster (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:

You are absolutely right. The statute has two elements. The disclosure and the intent. So, disclosure without criminal intent is just disclosure.

The first element like I mentioned in an earlier comment, would not be violated by Google either because Google does not do the disclosing. They simply copy disclosures made by others.

Stephen T. Stone (profile) says:

Re:

Should Google be liable for archiving Doxing in its search results?

Unless Google is informed of it and refuses to remove it, no, Google shouldn’t be held liable for doxxing. Put liability where it lies: with the person who did the doxxing.

Also: If you mention “anonymous defamation” or some similar bullshit in a reply to this comment, I will accept that as an acknowledgement of your ignorance. Your further contributions will be read accordingly.

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mephistophocles (profile) says:

Huh?

Mike, your argument is incoherent. If one has a right to remain anonymous, one doesn’t forfeit that right be exercising their right to free speech. Sure, nazis are horrible. Nobody (except nazis, maybe) disagree. But they’re not forfeiting rights unless they’re doing something illegal, and saying rotten things isn’t illegal – as you & this blog have admirably pointed out for many year.

Perhaps one doesn’t have a right to be anonymous. If that’s the case, though, NO ONE has that right – not just those who aren’t saying legal things we don’t like.

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Mike Masnick (profile) says:

Re: Huh?

Mike, your argument is incoherent

I don’t think it is.

If one has a right to remain anonymous, one doesn’t forfeit that right be exercising their right to free speech.

That is true, but I think you misunderstand the right of anonymity. It is not that someone who has figured out who you are can’t expose it. It is that you can’t be forced against your will to reveal who you are. Those are two different things. If someone else figure out who you are, it is their 1st amendment right to say.

nasch (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:2 Huh?

You didn’t explicitly say that you’re in favor of doxxing Nazis, but you didn’t say it’s a bad idea, either. I can definitely see how this paragraph can be interpreted as somewhat supportive of the idea that doxxing people might be OK if they’re really bad people.

For fairly obvious reasons, many would likely argue that we should want those people identified. And while the report notes that efforts are underway to try to track down the identities of people who were active on this forum, and it could be argued that the intent behind figuring out who was on this forum is to "intimidate or harass" those individuals (for being Nazis), I think many people who might otherwise support these kinds of privacy laws might take issue with the idea that revealing these individuals as Nazis and/or Nazi sympathizers should be illegal.

That One Guy (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:3 Huh?

I think(and please correct me if I’m wrong here Mike) the objection is to the ‘harmful/illegal things’ bit, as it’s one thing to support and/or understand why someone would support doxxing losers like neo-nazis, and another thing entirely to support people doxxing them and doing ‘harmful/illegal’ things to them.

Mike Masnick (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:4 Huh?

Doing harmful/illegal things is already illegal.

Adding on a new crime of doxxing on top of that is the problem. There are many cases where doxxing would be inappropriate, but there are many cases where revealing who someone is, is part of a legitimate journalistic practice. Such a law would almost certainly be abused by those covered by journalists.

CopBlaster (profile) says:

This Statute Will Do Nothing to Stop Doxing

This bill defines personal information in such a way that most doxing is not covered. See the first page of the section by section summary https://eshoo.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Section-by-Section-Online-Privacy-Act-Eshoo-Lofgren.pdf that says "Personal Information does not include…Publicly available information related to an individual."

Anonymous Coward says:

Where is the line drawn between secret and public? Maybe your coworkers know your phone number – would saying that on the Internet be doxxing or is it public knowledge?
If someone sets up a webpage with all their contact details and you link to it, is that doxxing? For that matter, if all you refer to is the Yellow Pages, is it doxxing?
If your friend installs an app that harvests their contacts list, the app maker suffers a data breach and your number is included in a data dump, is your number still secret or is it now public knowledge?

Too much of a grey area to write effective laws on.

Anonymous Coward says:

Good-Now shut down everyone spreading personal identifiable info

I look forward to the DMV folks being the first to be strung up under this new law, for distributing personally identifiable info on innocent motorists to everyone from statisticians to debt collectors.

Some of these people do intend harm and the victims have the right to expect that info gathered for one purpose will not feed doxxing efforts aimed at something else – such as extorting funds. Lock. Em. Up.

Anonymous Coward says:

Doxing combined with defamation should become its own tort. If you combine a lie about someone with their personal information, that’s where the line should be. "Defamatory invasion of privacy" might be the name for it.

This would draw a clearly constitutional line between merely repeating public information and doing it for an actionable purpose. As it is, the combination of the two should also be considered stalking.

Wendy Cockcroft (profile) says:

Re: Re:

Yeah… that happened to me, with real life consequences. Imagine the cost of tracking down a troll with a burner .ru email account. Now imagine going up against a website operated by people who will only remove the actually actionable elements of a troll post, then charge you for "SEO" to move it down the search results.

Basically, for this to succeed you’d have to know who the abuser is AND have the bread to pay for a lawsuit.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:

The tort should be "defamatory invasion of privacy." Using someone’s personal information combined with defamation should be prima facie evidence of stalking.

Lawyers are behind a lot of this, using "journalism" websites and blogs to backchannel their dirtywork, using hackers to create foreign websites which are litigation-proof and to avoid losing Section 230 immunity.

In the end, the way to neutralize them is to first go after the "useful idiots" they use as pawns, which teaches other useful idiots that they will be suffering the consequences for grinding someone else’s axe. "But…I read it on the internet!" is not a defense especially when they repost the lies in their own words. Then it’s "But…I got caught up in it!" After that it’s "I’m settling this just to put it behind me. You are committing legal extortion."

Actually, I’m not, I’m just suing the people I can reach, the ones dumb enough to believe some foreign troll website and use the supposed "comraderie" to continue acting on their own. Perhaps one day they’ll go after the lawyers who set them up. If this happened to you, and you’re a lawyer, odds are it was an adversary in a case who did it or masterminded it.

Wendy Cockcroft (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re: Re:

In the end, the way to neutralize them is to first go after the "useful idiots" they use as pawns, which teaches other useful idiots that they will be suffering the consequences for grinding someone else’s axe. "But…I read it on the internet!" is not a defense especially when they repost the lies in their own words. Then it’s "But…I got caught up in it!" After that it’s "I’m settling this just to put it behind me. You are committing legal extortion."

The "useful idiot" enabled my exoneration by proving it was a troll post. No harm done by her, and we’re on better terms now. As for the fake consumer review site, it allowed me to put up a rebuttal, so no harm done by them. The only one doing any harm was the troll, who had direcly contacted my employers.

Actually, I’m not, I’m just suing the people I can reach, the ones dumb enough to believe some foreign troll website and use the supposed "comraderie" to continue acting on their own. Perhaps one day they’ll go after the lawyers who set them up. If this happened to you, and you’re a lawyer, odds are it was an adversary in a case who did it or masterminded it.

If no direct harm was done by the people you can reach you won’t prevail. I’m not a lawyer and the troll is just a common troll who left enough clues to signpost that he was a troll. The harm is now just an anecdote I use to remind people that their own conduct does more to affect their reputations than what people say about them online.

Wendy Cockcroft (profile) says:

The "But they're g-d Nazis!" exception

Mike, I don’t give a rat’s who the people are, doxxing bad, end of.

It’s not for Joe Bloggs to go out hunting Nazis or their sympathisers/enablers based on IP addresses (so much wrong…! Start with copyright trolling efforts and end with the Pizzagate debacle to see how identifying anyone as the Bad Guy tends to work out in practice), it’s for the authorities.

"But they’re g-d Nazis!" is no excuse for any behaviour you wouldn’t want meted out to yourself, be it punching someone in the face or sharing their personal details online.

I don’t like the buggers, but if it’s acceptable to punch a Nazi because they’re considered the bad guys (okay, that’s actually true), one day it might be acceptable to punch Christians. I’m a Christian. One day it might be acceptable to punch Irish people. I’m Irish. One day it might be acceptable to punch women. I’m a woman. One day it might become acceptable to punch office workers. I work in an office. Can you see the problem here? Yes, I’m saying that doxxing is as harmful as physical violence because the real world hassle, from unwanted pizza deliveries to SWATting are harmful.

Come on, mate, it’s not in the public interest to mark individuals out as targets on the off-chance that they still belong to or sympathise with a particular group. And before anyone mentions CP, innocent till proven guilty, okay? It’s not our job to track down and punish people. That is the provenance of law enforcement.

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Anonymous Coward says:

Re: The "But they're g-d Nazis!" exception

  • I’m saying that doxxing is as harmful as physical violence because the real world hassle, from unwanted pizza deliveries to SWATting are harmful.*

Some folks with very close ties to lawyers who have been mentioned more than once on this site have SWATTED people that the lawyers had been defaming and ridiculing. It’s what got the police involved.

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Anonymous Coward says:

A number of lawyers who are "fans" of this site have been engaging in this practice for years. Rose McGowan recently revealed that a very famous lawyer mentioned to a very famous producer defendant that she could have arranged to have her reputation ruined online by having her depicted as "unstable."

Numerous litigants have been targeted in similar ways over the years, by hackers and "chan" style trolls who even set up full websites to try to demolish reputations of these litigants. Some other lawyers have even defended these "trolls" under the guise of "free speech" though I doubt they’d ever want their own kids dragged into the limelight the way others have experienced (I mean it’s only to inform them of what their parents are doing, right?).

It’s no small wonder that an article against this bill would magically appear.

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Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:

Aww, the disrespectful misspelling of a name. People who do that are SO brilliant!!!

I never doxed anyone, though Mike is a public figure with a severely reduced expectation of privacy. Who said I was talking about his family anyway? That sauce has a much more appropriate Gander.

What is YOUR concern with this anyway?

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re: Is you memory really that bad bro?

Hey bro. Your the one who spelt it that way first. Don’t be coy, you threw several hissy fits and named mikes family here. It might not rise to the level of stalking but it was creepy as fuck. Just like when you threatened to rape this bro. And others.

I don’t like old impotent fuckwit wannabe bullies.

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Anonymous Coward says:

"I think many people who might otherwise support these kinds of privacy laws might take issue with the idea that revealing these individuals as Nazis and/or Nazi sympathizers should be illegal."

Yes, because they are hypocrites. "Privacy for me, not for thee."

"Context matters quite a bit, and it’s pretty difficult to write context into the law."

Ah, so you’re one of those hypocrites. What you mean is "Wrong think matters quite a bit, and it’s pretty difficult to write Right think and wrongthink into the law"

And, no, it should not be legal to dox people who think what YOU believe are the wrong things. If someone commits a crime then it’s also not your job to interfere or be a vigilante.

And that, again, gets at part of the issue with legislating privacy. Context matters quite a bit, and it’s pretty difficult to write context into the law.

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