A new report PUBLISHED Tuesday found that while violent threats to public servants across the US increasingly, “comprehensive” state-level consumer privacy laws do not provide adequate protection for those civil servantscreate a “data-to-violence pipeline.”

The report was published by researcher Justin Sherman of the Public Service Alliance’s Security Project, a PLATFORM which provides free and discounted security services to current and former public servants. While Trump officials are talking documenting The behavior of federal immigration agents on the job as “violence” and “doxing,” Sherman said, adding that the report focuses on the more traditional, widely accepted definition—the publication of a person’s personal, private information, such as their home address, with the specific intent to harm them.

Sherman reviewed 19 different consumer privacy laws and found that while they all gave consumers the right to stop data brokers from selling personal information obtained from private sources, none gave “public servants the right to legally compel state agencies to redact their personal data from public records,” and none prevented data brokers from selling data, including people’s home addresses, if they are obtained through public court records such as property filings. Additionally, none include a so-called “private right of action,” which would allow individuals to sue for violations of their respective state’s privacy laws.

Together, this means that information about public employees is incredibly available and that they have remarkably few ways to prevent its dissemination.

Violent threats against public servants are increasing, according to a different analysis by PSA and the Impact Project on more than 1,600 individual threats made against public servants between 2015 and 2025. That analysis found that violent threats against local public servants, including school board members and election workers, represented almost a third of the reports analyzed. It also found that threatening statements occurred at nearly nine times the rate of physical assault, and that one form of threat could escalate to another.

A 2024 report from the Brennan Center for Justice found that a greater share of women and Democrats reported an increase in the severity of abuse since first taking public office, compared to men and Republicans.

Last year, a 57-year-old man charged with the killing of Melissa Hortman, a Democratic state representative, along with her husband in their home in Minnesota. According to court recordsthe alleged shooter had handwritten lists of dozens of Minnesota state and federal public officials, including Hortman’s name and his home address, along with 11 “person search engines” that allow anyone to look up personal information about a person, including their home addresses, phone numbers, and names of relatives, usually for a nominal fee.

The report advocates for legislation that would specifically address privacy concerns for all public servants, including public school teachers and local elected officials, that would not necessarily be covered by the existing one. FEDERAL or state privacy laws. It suggests that lawmakers may try to balance First Amendment and privacy concerns by regulating the digitization of public records and how easy remote access is, rather than limiting them entirely.

Sherman, the author of the new report, said that while more public records may be useful to journalists and accountability watchdogs, the repackaged public records sold by data vendors may make it easier for abusive individuals to harass and harass victims even if they move to a different state. In the past, people looking for public records had to have an idea of ​​where the public record was, and physically go to that location.