GFAF’s letter of concern to lawmakers explains how people could be criminally charged for sharing information that’s already public.
Threats and harassment, particularly those enabled by the anonymity of social media, are real and serious concerns in Georgia and beyond. However, Georgia Senate Bill 27 presents little realistic likelihood of remedying those ills, while exposing innocent speakers and writers to arrest and prosecution that could be triggered by nothing more than publishing an already-prominent person’s name.
On March 20, 2025, the Georgia First Amendment Foundation sent a letter of concern to members of the General Assembly’s House Judiciary Non-Civil Committee who have the so-called “anti-doxing” measure on their docket.
The letter details the problems with SB 27, including:
- The breadth of the speech criminalized is so vast – encompassing even such inconsequential and seemingly harmless information as a person’s name or email address, regardless of whether it is already widely publicly available – that a person could easily commit the crime of doxing unwittingly.
- The mental state required to prosecute someone for doxing – reckless disregard, rather than intent – is not sufficiently protective, given the realities of coarse incivility in contemporary online discourse; regrettably, it is always foreseeable that someone in the vast realm of internet users will misuse information in harmful ways.
- The injuries that SB 27 protects against are so minimal – including the anticipation of having to change one’s email address, or of losing $500 worth of business – that almost any unwelcome online speech could qualify as a crime.
In the letter, the foundation offers examples of how SB 27 could lead to dire unintended consequences. The foundation also offers options. Ideally, lawmakers would shelve SB 27 for further study. But if lawmakers press ahead with this flawed legislation, they could improve it by narrowing the scope to better protect both privacy and First Amendment rights.
>>> LEARN MORE: Georgia’s ‘anti-doxing’ legislation upsets the balance between free speech and privacy
