Federal Privacy Law Should Protect All of Us, Not Just Judges

In January, during a run along the Mount Vernon Trail, the gleam of the marble-domed Jefferson Memorial came into view. Crossing the Potomac River and through the grounds designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, one of us — Dr. Mary K. Daly — ran up the steps to the memorial chamber. Looming in the center is Rudulph Evans’ bronze statue of our former president holding the Declaration of Independence.

On the southwest wall is an excerpt from that document: “All men are created equal […] endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” It was a profound moment. Dr. Daly was in Washington as the chief medical officer of mePrism, an online privacy service, for a meeting in the Russell Senate Office Building to discuss privacy in the newborn screening program. How can any of us enjoy these rights without privacy protection?

In December 2022, just a month before that trip, President Biden signed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023 into law. It includes the Daniel Anderl Judicial Security and Privacy Act. Daniel was the only son of New Jersey District Judge Esther Salas. He was killed by a litigating attorney who found the judge’s home address online, posed as a delivery man, critically wounded her husband, and fatally shot Daniel.

Judge Salas’ video statement, weeks after Daniel’s death, is heart-wrenching and insightful. She said, “We may not be able to stop something like this from happening again, but we can make it hard for those who target us to track us down.” Federal judges, she continued, should not be forced to “live in fear for our lives because personal information, like our home addresses, can easily be obtained by anyone seeking to do us or our families harm.” For her, the stakes of the situation were clear: “This is a matter of life and death and we can’t just sit back and wait for another tragedy to strike.”

The newly-passed Daniel Anderl Judicial Security and Privacy Act recognizes the government’s deep understanding of the serious threats posed by data brokers and people search companies. The Act states, “It shall be unlawful for a data broker to knowingly sell, license, trade for consideration, or purchase covered information of an at-risk individual or immediate family,” improving safety for federal judges across the nation.

It’s hard to imagine that anyone would oppose privacy protection that could have saved Daniel. It is also very hard to reconcile that this Act was voted into law with the knowledge that not just judges, but all citizens, are vulnerable to these risks. What about teachers, nurses, children, victims of domestic violence, service industry staff, police officers, and everyone else?

On the Jefferson monument’s southeast wall is an excerpt from the president’s 1826 letter to Samuel Kercheval: “As new discoveries are made, new truths discovered […] institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times.” The Founding Fathers understood the importance of amending the Constitution “to keep pace with the times.” The Fourth, Ninth, and 14th Amendments convey the rights to privacy that should be applied to the "new truths" of this digital age. Now more than ever, in this post-Dobbs world, we must be cognizant of how our privacy will be protected and ensured. The online data marketplace has rapidly outpaced laws, and reaped the financial benefits of this poorly regulated space.

Part of the privilege of attending Harvard, in addition to claiming superiority over Yale and having dining halls that look like Hogwarts, is the gift of using our education to be the voices of the future. Harvard students must ensure our University has the correct foundation on which to build formative experiences that will guide us beyond matriculation.

This necessity extends to Harvard’s own privacy statement, which neither of us, an older graduate of the College nor a current student, had read. After exploring the website, we felt like it buried information, requiring the reader to delve further and further through links to get a full view.

Click the one listed under “Users located outside the United States of America.” You may raise your eyebrows at the more detailed disclosures regarding how Harvard collects and uses data. Open the “Read More” links and you may be surprised at how much additional content appears. If we, as members of the Harvard community, will be among those addressing privacy concerns for the nation, we must understand how personal information is treated by our own institution.

The Daniel Anderl Judicial Security and Privacy Act has dipped its toes into the muddy waters of online data exposure. It protects very few. One of the greatest honors of being an American citizen is the belief that we are all created equal and endowed with the same unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We can start here at Harvard by making sure our privacy policies actually protect us. We can speak up and advocate for a federal privacy law that protects not just a few, but all.

Dr. Mary K. Daly ’94 is the Chief Medical Officer of mePrism, an online privacy service. Noah A. Jun ’24, a Crimson Sports Editor, is an Economics concentrator in Mather House and an intern at mePrism.