[dk1138]

I don't think "first class" citizens is the right classification. There are certain fields/work that are inherently more risky or serve a critical component of society. We are seeing this exact thing pan out now with medical care--doctors and nurses are precious resources and if we don't protect them, we put our overall societal health at risk. Same is true for judges--if you don't protect them, you put the rule of law at risk which is a way of protecting everyone.

[rsync]

No.

Equal protection under the law and freedom of speech.

It's a terrible story being told here and I am saddened by her loss but this judge and you, and I, and everyone else are peers.

Judges may be interesting and special for brief periods of time while they adjudicate on their bench but out in the world they are normal people just like everyone else. If privacy laws are inadequate for them then they are inadequate for all of us.

I can't imagine a situation where I would know, much less disseminate, the address of a judge but that is without any question speech protected by the first amendment.

[dalbasal]

I think it's worth noting that attacks on judges is probably more detrimental to society than most murders. It's similar for elected office, which is one reason we have these special protections.

That said, I agree with you. As Judge Salas says herself in this article, this is about the foundations of democracy. Peerage is certainly that too.

Also, since prosecutors and police are covered by this law, we need to think of this as mostly relating to law enforcement. They are the vast majority of this population.

Meanwhile, privacy is obviously an area that needs 21st century attention. We should at least get a reason why we don't get these protections too. Extending their rights to privacy separately from everyone else doesn't sit right with me.

[bb88]

> Equal protection under the law and freedom of speech.

The reality is that certain types of people are in fact more important than others. POTUS gets secret service protection -- something that most citizens won't get.

Does a federal judge deserve extra protection under the law than an average citizen? Probably. It's just a question of how much -- precisely for the reasons given in the article.

Now whether or not we should all have that right may be a question worth asking, but it seems pretty certain that federal judges are worthy of this kind of protection.

[rsync]

"The reality is that certain types of people are in fact more important than others. POTUS gets secret service protection -- something that most citizens won't get."

I'm not talking about that - and I have no problem if judges (or anyone else) have extra bodyguards or special limousines.

I can say anything I like about the president. The same is true for these judges. The equal protection I am speaking of is not what kind of armor their car has, but what I am, and am not, allowed to say to or about them.

[GavinMcG]

Go ahead and say anything you like about them. Your political opinions are entitled to the highest order of protection under the 1st Amendment.

There's little reason to say that "X judge lives at Y address" is equivalently deserving of protection. We might choose to protect your saying so out of an abundance of caution, to avoid a slippery slope whereby we restrict too much speech. But the idea they're equivalently valuable things to protect in their own right needs a serious defense.

[rsync]

"We might choose to protect your saying so out of an abundance of caution, to avoid a slippery slope whereby we restrict too much speech. But the idea they're equivalently valuable things to protect in their own right needs a serious defense."

Investigative journalism revealing corruption.

It might not be the address per se but it will be similarly identifying and revealing information about a persons day to day life. This information would be communicated both while reporting the story, between reporters and other sources, etc., as well as exposed in the journalistic product itself.

Or, given five seconds of thought, that was the first, obvious thing that came to mind.

[GavinMcG]

But there you go: you yourself just distinguished it, acknowledging that the address itself isn't what needs to be published in order to preserve society's interest in free publication about corruption.

[tekknik]

Does this mean their life is more valuable than yours?

[Diggsey]

No, it means it's more important that they not be coerced.

[tekknik]

So then what is the solution? If their life is not more important than everybody else’s then why do they get extra protection? Why can’t we extend the same protection to all? Why do we have special cases? Why can’t an individual, and a judge, be entitled to the same protection?

[GavinMcG]

Because your premise is all wrong.

Their life is more important to protect from particular threats than everyone else's, because they're in a position where we expect them to make rulings based on their expertise and judgment rather than their fear or concern for popularity, and because they are more frequently in a position to garner someone's resentment or hatred than most of us are.

Just because we're all equal in the eyes of God doesn't mean our society should pretend the world isn't complex.

[GavinMcG]

How much First Amendment history and jurisprudence do you know? There's a naive view that speech is speech, and it's all protected, but that is an absolutely radical view compared to what "free speech" has meant for most of the post-Enlightenment period.

[dalbasal]

What does this have to do with the article or the comment?

Are you saying that a judge's address is not free speech" in this post-Enlightenment (unenlightened?) period.

[GavinMcG]

The comment said that it is without any question speech protected by the 1st Amendment. My comment is obviously following up on that.

I do not think it is clear that publishing a judge's address is the kind of speech that is necessarily protected by the 1st Amendment, and certainly not the kind that would have been considered inherently worthy of protection around when the 1st Amendment was written. And I suspect the claim that it is "without question" is a naive one.

[jdkee]

I will answer. Publishing the address of an individual is absolutely protected by the First Amendment unless it can be reasonably deemed a true threat, or an incitement to violence, under the appropriate judicial tests.

[dalbasal]

Fair enough. Apologies for the confrontational tone.

[freshhawk]

But those jobs aren't more risky, not by any measurement. What they are are positions of authority.

So it's hard to say "first class citizens" isn't the right term. Maybe "rulers"?

[TheOtherHobbes]

You don't think a job which massively inconveniences petty and violent criminals - some of whom will be part of larger crime families and networks - is inherently risky?

[ardy42]

> You don't think a job which massively inconveniences petty and violent criminals - some of whom will be part of larger crime families and networks - is inherently risky?

Those jobs are, but regular people have dangerous stalkers, are subject to harassment at their homes, or just want the peace of mind of some extra privacy, too.

No one's arguing that judges shouldn't have protection, it's just that the same protections should be available to everybody else. Limiting these projections to judges & police officers only really helps marketers and sleazy peoplesearch websites, etc.

[mulmen]

At first glance it appears being a judge is safer than being an office worker: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_safety_and_health...

[imbnwa]

Except as a judge you tend to die a terrible death if you do indeed die owing to your occupaion[0].

[0]https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/16921-judges-face-threats-w...

[freshhawk]

I probably would think it was too. But instead of just guessing I looked it up. It's not. Not even close.

It's so far away from being risky, in fact, that having people in the field intentionally lying means I think they are lying for a specific reason and I think people should be concerned about that.

[giantg2]

I think to know if it's more risky, we would need to see violent crime statistics of people in these positions vs those who are not.

[giantg2]

I'm not saying we shouldn't protect them. But why not extend these protections to the general public?

I used the term first class citizens because people in power tend to grant themselves more of it over time or have privileges (official or unofficial) which benefit them, and not just to protect them. For example, how often do you hear about police being given a ticket? Many laws explicitly except the people in Congress as well.

[huffmsa]

Better let the police remove their name tags and hide behind qualified immunity too then.

For their protection, and the stability and security of our society.

[dalbasal]

I see your point. "First class" is loaded, but I don't this is just about risk. That's evident in the content of the law and in both judge Salas' explanation for it.

"The federal government has a responsibility to protect all federal judges because our safety is foundational to our great democracy"

Indeed it is. It's not just about likelihood of an attack occurring. It's about potential consequences. Killing judges is destabilizing... both directly and via reaction. They are an actually weakening to the governing system as a whole.

We do actually have totally separate ways of protecting elected officials, including unique laws. They are, essentially, "first class citizens." It's because attacks are likely and because the consequences of such attacks are dangerous.

That said, I sympathize with the OP. Separate laws for the specific protection of certain classes of citizens is well... also relevant to the foundations of democracies. Why can't these protections^ be extended to everyone?

"“Daniel’s Law,” which prohibits the distribution of personal information, including home addresses and phone numbers, for judges, prosecutors and law enforcement personnel."

[patrickm129]

The solution to this is sentence enhancements.

For example, pass a law making the distribution of PII unlawful if the intent of the distribution is to cause violence or unrest. The law itself would cover everyone evenly.

With a few sentence enhancement clauses, the same statute that protects everyone equally can add additional terms of incarceration or mandatory minimums for judges and law enforcement.

[adolph]

The law itself would cover everyone evenly.

The key flaw of this theory is the dependance on law enforcement practice.

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/04/14/theory/

[baybal2]

You cannot do so because US congress is prohibited making laws "abridging the speech."

Such law abridges what somebody says, and thus cannot be made.

[robotresearcher]

There are well-established exceptions that include incitement to violence. Wikipedia's summary:

"Categories of speech that are given lesser or no protection by the First Amendment include obscenity (as determined by the Miller test), fraud, child pornography, speech integral to illegal conduct, speech that incites imminent lawless action, and regulation of commercial speech such as advertising."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_the_Unite...

[baybal2]

I cannot find any reference to that in the US constitution text.

[robotresearcher]

So?

These exceptions are given. What’s your point?

[centimeter]

"Enhancing" punishments on accusations as vague as "causing unrest" surely won't be abused...

[patrickm129]

I totally agree. The law is incredibly vague, I was just mentioning it as a "solution".

[asab]

demonstrating intent in court can often be quite difficult. focusing instead on outcomes for the judges may help

[patrickm129]

Yup. Thankfully in a criminal investigation, the burden of proof for "intent" is typically on the prosecutor. I'd rather give the prosecutor a harder time than a defendant.

[throwawaygh]

> There are certain fields/work that are inherently more risky or serve a critical component of society.

You mean like grocery delivery drivers and cashiers?

What about virologists? Or what about all of the PhD students in Field X, where X is not virology but some other thing that will be at the focal point of the next crisis but which everyone today thinks is unnecessary and figures we should stop over-produce PhDs for? 12 months ago you could probably come to a place like HN, complain that you can't find a good paying job with your phd in coronaviruses, and be told that academia is a pyramid scheme, that no one owes you anything and you should just learn to code and go work on a labor law arbitrage product at the center of an even bigger pyramid scheme.

Since we're on a technology forum, what about the engineers who implement the software/hardware that's used to manufacture PPE, or run simulations to help design mRNA vaccines, or write firmware for the machinery and devices used to mass produce vaccines? Or even more mundane but none-the-less useful stuff like designing and implementing intuitive UX for no-contact payment methods?

Anyways, what's the point of drawing this line between "useful resource" and "everyone else"? What if the role of government were to treat humans citizens with natural rights that should be protected by law, instead of as economic resources to be deployed?

Also, have you asked any essential workers how they feel about being treated as a useful resource? Instead of, you know, a human with natural and legal rights?

Perhaps judges don't need special treatment. Maybe, perhaps, personal privacy is incredibly important component of human dignity.