Doxxing in the Ivy League and the Universal Right to Privacy

by Anezka Krobot, 3L at St. Louis University School fo Law

In the wake of the situation in Gaza, there has been some conflict regarding the treatment of pro-Palestine student activists from prestigious universities, who have been doxxed and threatened because of their views on the conflict.

On the night of the Hamas attack on Israel, October 7, 2023, a coalition of Harvard student groups published an open letter stating that Israel was wholly to blame for the violence that had taken place. No names of individual students were released alongside the letter, but it only took a few days for the doxxing to begin. A truck with a digital billboard was purchased by conservative nonprofit Accuracy in Media and circled Harvard Square showing the names and photos of students affiliated with the groups who had published the letter, with a headline labeling them “Harvard’s Leading Antisemites.” Affected students were contacted and harassed, as well as members of their families, from parents to younger siblings. Accuracy in Media, which has the self-proclaimed mission of “exposing media bias” and “holding journalists as well as public and private officials accountable, has also purchased trucks to dox students at Yale.

Harvard established a task force on October 25, which provided targeted students with resources and services, provided a forum for their concerns and suggestions, and coordinated with staff and administrators to ensure the students’ safety. However, did the doxxing of these students, who had made conscious efforts to remain anonymous while expressing their beliefs, constitute a violation of their human rights?

Doxxing is “the intentional revelation of a person’s private information online without their consent, often with malicious intent,” according to the International Encyclopedia of Gender, Media, and Communication. The private information can include phone numbers, home addresses, ID numbers like Social Security numbers, or even private, intimate photos. It has been a form of online attack since the 1990s, but became a huge issue in 2014, when members of alt-right forums began harassing female video game developers and gamers in a phenomenon known as “Gamergate.”  Since then, some states in the U.S. have passed bills banning or providing remedies for victims of doxxing, but most states do not have any safeguards against or remedies for victims of doxxing, and there is no federal legislation on the issue.

Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 17 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights state respectively that “no one shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his or her honor and reputation,” and that “everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.” Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that all people have “the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

The most recent resolution on the right to privacy in the digital age was adopted by the Human Rights Council in September 2019, which states that all states “should ensure that any interference with the right to privacy is consistent with the principles of legality, necessity and proportionality.”  The resolution also calls for states to develop or maintain “preventive measures and remedies” for violations of privacy, and recognizes that “the right to privacy can enable the enjoyment of other rights and the free development of an individual’s personality and identity, and an individual’s ability to participate in political, economic, social and cultural life, and noting with concern that violations or abuses of the right to privacy might affect the enjoyment of other human rights, including the right to freedom of expression and to hold opinions without interference, and the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.” 

The Harvard students have the right to express their opinions on the treatment of Palestinian people under the Israeli regime, and being doxxed significantly interferes with their freedom to hold those opinions. Obviously, others are also allowed to disagree with them, but to doxx them goes beyond all principles of necessity and proportionality in this situation. Here, not only the students’ rights to privacy have been affected, but also the rights to privacy and safety of their families, who never made a statement about Gaza, and some of whom are minor children. Now, people know where those families live and have their contact information. In exercising your own right to free expression, you should not be allowed to violate another person’s right to privacy.

Read more about the UN’s stance on the right to digital privacy here. Read more about the UN’s stance on freedom of expression here.