By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
State Sen. Tony Luetkemeyer of Parkville has introduced legislation which would make the “doxing” of law enforcement in Missouri a felony.
“What that basically is is when somebody takes the private information of an individual, typically they post it on the Internet, and then they use that to encourage activist groups to usually come to the person’s house and protest or somehow intimidate them from doing their job,” Luetkemeyer tells St. Joseph Post.
Luetkemeyer sees doxing as a growing problem in Missouri.
“In Kansas City, we actually had an incident where a protestor stood out in front of the Kansas City Police Department headquarters and, on a megaphone, threatened to disclose the location of several officers’ children to try to coerce the police department to take some type of action and dismiss those officers and revoke their peace officer licenses,” Luetkemeyer says.
Doxing has been used to disclose a wide variety of personal information about people. Activists have released information about where people live, where their children go to school, and what routines people follow.
“You have officers who have had people show up in front of their house, when they’re spouse is trying to pull in the driveway and they’re blocking the driveway. This is very terrifying for these law enforcement families,” according to Luetkemeyer. “Again, these are folks who put their lives on the line every day to keep all of us safe and we need to be making sure that we’re doing what we can to keep them safe.”
Luetkemeyer, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, says the bill has received strong support in the legislature.
The practice is already a misdemeanor. Luetkemeyer’s measure, Senate Bill 129, would make it a felony.