Three years ago, Roy Den Hollander used the internet to find the address of District Court Judge Esther Salas. Hollander, a lawyer who was angry about a recent ruling by Salas, went to her home, where he shot her husband, Mark Anderl, and son, Daniel Anderl. While Mark Anderl recovered from his injuries, 20-year-old Daniel, died.
In response to the tragedy, Salas campaigned for Daniel’s Law, which shields the personal data of members of the legal community and law enforcement in New Jersey. “This gentleman, because of open-source information, was able to track my every move,” Salas said at a roundtable discussion at Stockton University Tuesday. “He knew my church. He knew my husband’s office. He had a list of Daniel’s baseball games.”
Without Daniel’s Law, Salas said she worries about the safety of other judges, and what that means for American democracy. “I think it is vital for democracy. I think we need to protect our judiciary. We need to send a strong message to would-be attackers that in America we do not tolerate this type of intimidation.”
Salas was joined by New Jersey State Bar Association President Timothy McGoughran and Christina Campbell, the director of the Office of Information Privacy. They say about 8,000 people in New Jersey’s legal and law enforcement communities out of the 15,000-plus who are eligible have signed up to protect their personal information, just more than half of who’s eligible.
Campbell explained that New Jersey employs a team of redactors to find personal information and attempt to erase it from the internet — or at least, make it more difficult to find.
Some critics of Daniel’s Law say it raises a larger question related to the First Amendment — whether blocking addresses of certain people interfere with the freedom of speech.
