The Trump administration says it’s cracking down on “organized doxing campaigns,” but free speech advocates worry its use of the vague term is conflating forms of protected speech with crimes, or most recently, domestic terrorism.
The administration has accused a Democratic lawmaker and activists who document enforcement operations of “doxing,” a nonlegal term that usually means exposing someone’s private or identifying information online. But as the administration stretches the meaning of the word, civil liberties groups are growing increasingly worried that it will intimidate people out of recording or reporting on Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s activities with the threat of criminal charges.
The Department of Homeland Security has argued for months that “doxing” threatens its personnel’s safety, and is therefore an act of violence. In DHS’s own words, “videotaping ICE law enforcement and posting photos and videos of them online is doxing our agents.”
But there’s plenty of pushback to that interpretation.
“The law protects federal agents against disclosures of personal information made with the intent to threaten, intimidate, or incite crimes against them, but it doesn’t protect ICE agents from public criticism or justify this Administration’s efforts to silence dissent, investigate activists, and recast lawful organizing as ‘domestic terrorism,’” said Becca Branum, the deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology’s Free Expression Project, in a statement to NOTUS.
There’s no federal law specifically prohibiting “doxing.” But the act can break anti-harassment or cybercrime laws.
Constitutional experts and former national security officials have already expressed discomfort with President Donald Trump’s newest public national security directive, which links some commonly held Democratic and progressive viewpoints to domestic terrorism — potentially subjecting more citizens to warrantless surveillance.
In that order, the president argues that online “doxing” is essential to so-called left-wing terrorist groups’ operations.
“These campaigns often begin by isolating and dehumanizing specific targets to justify murder or other violent action against them. They do so through a variety of fora, including anonymous chat forums, in-person meetings, social media, and even educational institutions,” the order reads, without providing examples or evidence.
“These campaigns then escalate to organized doxing, where the private or identifying information of their targets (such as home addresses, phone numbers, or other personal information) is exposed to the public with the explicit intent of encouraging others to harass, intimidate, or violently assault them,” the order goes on.
Last month, DHS issued a subpoena to Meta, demanding the social media company hand over information about accounts that posted about an agent for an “official, criminal investigation regarding officer safety,” calling it “Doxing.”
Federal judges so far have temporarily blocked the request for at least three immigration activists’ Instagram account information. Lawyers representing those users maintain that their clients didn’t break any laws.
“DHS’s Subpoena demanding that Meta disclose identifying information appears motivated by the government’s disdain for Doe’s viewpoint and a desire to chill Doe’s expressive conduct,” the ACLU of Northern California argued in its motion to quash the request.
In a separate motion filed on behalf of another user whose data was subpoenaed, the Civil Liberties Defense Center, an advocacy and legal defense nonprofit, argued that the request violated their client’s First Amendment right to anonymously engage in political speech.
“If they actually had evidence that someone violated one of the federal cyber laws, for which there are many, they would utilize those, but they don’t,” said Lauren Regan, an attorney with the CLDC. “That speaks to the true intention of subpoenas like this, which is to try and chill Americans from engaging in this First Amendment-protected activity in criticizing, or drawing attention to, ICE and the government.”
A judge last week temporarily blocked Meta from complying with the government’s request for that user’s information.
When it comes to the administration’s focus on what it sees as left-wing terrorism, doxing is clearly top of mind. A reporter pressed White House senior adviser Stephen Miller on Monday about the “vast” networks he’s claimed are responsible for recent high-profile shootings. Miller argued that “doxing” existed on “a continuum of violence.”
“It involves both organized doxing. It involves violent threats and intimidation. It involves explicit calls to commit violence against a targeted person, and then that tends to escalate into physically violent and obstructive acts,” Miller said. “It’s this continuum that we see over and over again, where they’re trying to use illegal violence and intimidation to disturb the operations of the federal government and federal personnel.”
“Who’s ‘they?’ Antifa isn’t actually an organization, right?” the reporter asked, as Miller moved onto the next question. In response to questions from NOTUS, the White House did not clarify which specific organizations Miller was talking about, or address civil liberties’ groups concerns.
“Left-wing, anti-Trump organizations are constantly looking for new ways to criticize the President’s popular efforts to Make America Safe Again,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson wrote in a statement, referring NOTUS to “the President’s antifa roundtable highlighting the countless examples of radical left-wing violence that his executive action will address.”
Doxing did not come up at that meeting, and the White House didn’t clarify how it distinguishes protected speech from doxing.
But plenty of case law protects people who post truthful information that serves the public interest, including people who film and identify DHS personnel, said David Greene, the civil liberties director with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
“There might be governmental interest in shielding people from harassment, but then the government has to tailor their response to actually the harassment, not the mere identification,” Greene said. “The fact that someone is involved in something, that’s a matter of public interest — not typically something that would be considered ‘doxing.’”
Greene added that prosecutors attempting to go after people the Trump administration considers doxers would mean that the government still has to prove that the publisher intended for an illegal result to happen, according to existing statutes.
“Merely calling something ‘doxing’ doesn’t really have any type of legal effect. It’s just a rhetorical characterization,” Greene said.
If throwing around “doxing” is intended as a rhetorical tool, Trump’s Department of Homeland Security has a history of using it loosely, and often.
DHS, in a news release and in several posts on X, accused Rep. Salud Carbajal, a California Democrat, of doxing. The administration alleged that he shared an ICE official’s business card “with members of the violent mob” at a farm raid in Carpinteria, California, which DHS said resulted in someone throwing a rock at an ICE employee.
“ICE’s ‘doxing’ claims are completely unfounded. Their on-site public relations officer voluntarily handed me a business card in full view of TV cameras, reporters, and dozens of livestreamers,” Carbajal wrote in a statement to NOTUS. “To characterize it as ‘doxing’ is a deliberate distortion, and an attempt to mislead the public and deflect accountability for their aggressive actions that day, which endangered numerous civilians.”
DHS did not respond to a request for comment.
DHS routinely argues that its personnel wear masks to protect them from “doxing.” DHS and Republicans have generally characterized Democratic efforts to prohibit that policing tactic as an effort to subject federal law-enforcement personnel to acts of targeted violence.
The administration’s rhetoric about so-called doxing is especially worrying organizations representing photojournalists — people who might find themselves documenting and publishing identifying photos of federal law-enforcement personnel as part of their job.
“There is no reasonable expectation of privacy for public officials doing public work in public spaces,” said Mickey H. Osterreicher, counsel for the National Press Photographers Association. “Conflating newsgathering with doxing is not only legally wrong, but dangerously undermines press freedom and the public’s right to know.”