Privacy in Georgia for first responders

What protects you in Georgia

Georgia's main shield is O.C.G.A. §50-18-72(a)(20.1), which exempts home address, telephone, SSN, and similar personal information of public employees — including law enforcement, prosecutors, judges, public defenders, and prison guards — from Open Records Act disclosure. Once the agency is on notice, those fields stay confidential.

The 2023 amendments to O.C.G.A. §16-11-90 added criminal penalties for distributing the personal information of certain protected public employees with intent to threaten or intimidate. That's the deterrent layer — it punishes the act, but doesn't stop the data from being on a broker site to begin with.

Georgia's Anti-Doxxing Act (Senate Bill 27, codified at O.C.G.A. §16-11-93) gives doxing victims a civil cause of action — that means grounds to sue — with statutory damages of at least $500 for significant economic injury, and a felony aggravated-doxing track. It's general-purpose, not officer-specific, but it's a real lever if your information shows up online with intent to harass.

The remaining gap: Georgia has no broker-removal statute — no equivalent of New Jersey's Daniel's Law (the NJ statute that lets covered officers sue data brokers for failing to remove a home address). The protection is what the agencies disclose, not what the brokers republish. The 2023 doxxing of Fulton County DA Fani Willis is the in-state demonstration. Her home address, her family's addresses, and the addresses of all 23 grand jurors were posted on conspiracy sites within days of the Trump RICO indictment. The criminal threat statutes caught the worst threateners after the fact. Nothing pulled the address back.

What still leaks

Three sources stay open in Georgia:

1. County court records. Fulton, DeKalb, Cobb, and Gwinnett publish detailed online dockets. Civil filings, divorce, traffic court — addresses appear in the body of many pleadings unless redacted at filing time. Federal cases on PACER are entirely outside state protection.
2. Property records. County clerks of superior court file deed transfers and the tax assessors publish ownership and tax data online. Brokers scrape these directly.
3. Out-of-state and commercial brokers. Spokeo, Whitepages, BeenVerified, and the rest source from out-of-state aggregators and don't honor Georgia law.

Laws that work for you here

• O.C.G.A. §50-18-72(a)(20.1) — file with each agency holding your records to ensure your home address and personal contact info are redacted before any release.
• O.C.G.A. §50-18-78 — written request to local governments to redact officer personal information from public records. Local governments must provide a request form on their website.
• O.C.G.A. §16-11-90 — criminal penalty for malicious distribution of personal information. Real teeth, but reactive.
• O.C.G.A. §16-11-93 (Anti-Doxxing Act) — sue the doxer directly, $500 minimum damages, with felony aggravated-doxing on top.
• Address Confidentiality Program — substitute-address program through the AG's office for victims of domestic violence, stalking, sexual assault, and human trafficking. Officers are not categorically eligible unless they're also a covered victim.

What we sweep that the state doesn't

The Georgia shield closes the agency disclosure path. We handle the brokers. We file standard opt-outs across 200+ people-search sites and re-check every two weeks. After any property transaction or court filing in Georgia, we re-check inside 30 days because those events drive the fastest re-listings.