Why We Must Protect Police — Online and At Home

By Rob Shavell, CEO and Co-Founder of DeleteMe

While some level of danger may be an accepted part of life for an on-duty police officer, worrying about threats to your personal life when off-duty shouldn't be. Regrettably, with police officers increasingly targeted online and away from their jobs, the firewall between personal and professional activity is often insufficient.

Even though the idea of web-based attacks might sound benign, police officers should take cyber threats just as seriously as offline ones. It’s not unusual for harassment that starts online to lead to real-world intimidation, reputational damage, and even violence. For law enforcement professionals at every level, the threat of online attacks is rising.

Understanding the Threat

Driven partly by increasing political polarization, the line between activism and intimidation can easily blur for both civilians and police officers. Too often, civilians who feel aggrieved with law enforcement, or other state bodies, are prepared to weaponize officials' personal information against them. Today, leaking an officer's personal information in the context of public criticism, also known as “doxxing” (or “doxing”), is a worryingly common tactic.

In California, at least two Los Angeles Police Department officers had personal information, including their children's school locations, exposed following a controversial police shooting. Since George Floyd’s death in 2020, police officials nationwide have had their personal information dumped online amid ongoing anti-police activism.

Disgruntled individuals are also likely to use officers' personal information to escalate threats into police stalking — sometimes long after an alleged grievance. In 2017, for example, William Young, a 54-year old man, was charged with stalking a police officer for 20 years — ever since the officer arrested him for stalking and menacing women in 1999. According to a 2015 paper, "Stalking Victimization Among Police Officers," the stalking of police officers also appears to be a widely underreported crime.

Legal Protection Is Often Lacking

Against this rising threat level, more significant legal protection for officers' personal information is undoubtedly necessary. In this light, the passing of "Daniel’s Law" in New Jersey last November is certainly a positive step. Named after Daniel Anderl, the son of federal judge Esther Salas, who was murdered by an aggrieved attorney called Roy Den Hollander, Daniel’s Law changes the Open Public Records Act (OPRA). Specifically, it alters the definition of public (i.e., government) records. Under Daniel’s Law, businesses and government bodies are compelled to, if requested, to remove any information revealing the home addresses or phone numbers of active, previously active, or currently retired judicial officers, prosecutors, and law enforcement officials.

Other states have recently followed suit. Alabama, Oklahoma, and Missouri have all recently advanced bills attempting to prevent online disclosure of personal information about law enforcement officers. However, many are likely to eventually face legal challenges, like in West Virginia, as overly broad language creates risks of First Amendment conflicts.

While there are currently efforts to get a federal version of Daniel’s Law passed, consistent legal protections are still lacking, and officers’ personal information remains fair game for anyone to find and publish. At the same time, even legally protected data is highly likely to leak online through targeted data breaches, accidental exposure, or data brokers.

Protective Privacy for Law Enforcement

Any police officer concerned with their data footprint should start by googling their name. Doing so will likely give them more personal information than they would be comfortable with a criminal knowing.

A significant proportion of this exposed personal information ends up online courtesy of data brokers. These companies, such as Whitepages and Equifax, constantly scour publicly accessible documents and sources to gather and collate information about individuals. Acxiom, a single data broker, has data on more than 500 million individuals with an average of 3,000 pieces of information about each one. This information often includes a person's name, home address, phone number, and political affiliation, among other data points. Data brokers collect information to resell it to advertisers and anyone else willing to pay for it. For law enforcement officers, this presents an obvious issue.

Anyone can manually request data brokers to remove their personal information from their sites. Removing information from data brokers is an effective tactic for reducing personal data exposure. However, for police officers, or anyone with limited time, doing so can be an extremely tedious process. An alternative is to use a privacy protection service to coordinate the removal process for you and, importantly, to continue scanning and removing data after the first removal attempt. Accordingly, privacy protection services are an increasingly popular option for law enforcement bodies looking to secure their officers’ personal information. At DeleteMe, we have seen a growing number of police advocacy groups enrolling in our data protection programs over the past 12 months.

Practicing Privacy Hygiene

While removing information from data brokers is essential, police officers also need to ensure that their activities don’t compromise their privacy or cause unnecessary damage to their careers.

To protect your privacy online, simple things like keeping your social media profiles private or using a false name for publicly accessible accounts are important. We also don't recommend that any officer join law enforcement related groups on social media sites such as Facebook. While doing so might be a great way to blow off steam or share memes, there are numerous examples of officers past online activity coming back to haunt them.

It's vital to remember that if your social media profiles are public, anyone can see everything you post. Even private information can linger for a long time providing ammunition for anyone who might want to harm you in the future. However, while officers should be careful with social media use, maintaining offline privacy is important too. Comments about work-related matters while off duty can reach the wrong ears. It's worth noting that, in 2019, a member of the public blackmailed an officer from the Metropolitan Police Service in the U.K. after hearing him talk about a murder case on a night out.

Final Thoughts

With threat actors willing and able to leverage personal information for malicious intent, officers and groups representing them need to be proactive in response. Unfortunately, the threat to officers' data is only likely to increase as media reports continue to catalyze anti-police sentiment.

While getting ahead of the threat to officers’ personal information is key to keeping them safe, doing so shouldn't be a burden on the officers themselves. After all, for the men and women who risk their lives to keep the public safe, information security shouldn't be optional.