Privacy in Georgia for first responders

What protects you in Georgia

Georgia's strongest protection is its Open Records Act. Under O.C.G.A. §50-18-72(a)(21), a public employee's home address, home and personal cell phone numbers, Social Security number, birth date, and immediate family identity are exempt from release. That covers law enforcement officers, judges, prosecutors, public defenders, and correctional staff. When an agency answers an open-records request, it has to withhold those fields.

Two other provisions go further.

O.C.G.A. §50-18-78 lets a law enforcement officer send a written request to a city or county to remove a home address and phone number, including a spouse's, from property records posted online. Within 30 days the local government must remove those fields, and it must post a request form on its website.

House Bill 199, effective July 1, 2025, extends similar protection to judges. A current or former judge, or their spouse, can ask state and local offices to keep a personal phone number, home address, and property or tax records out of public disclosure.

These laws control what government agencies release. They do not reach the data brokers that already copied and republished the same information. Georgia has no broker-removal statute, no equivalent of New Jersey's Daniel's Law, the New Jersey statute that lets covered officers sue a data broker that fails to remove their home address after a request. Georgia also considered a dedicated anti-doxxing law, Senate Bill 27, in 2025. It passed the Senate but did not become law, so no Georgia statute targets doxxing directly.

The in-state demonstration came in 2023. After a Fulton County grand jury voted to indict Donald Trump and 18 others, the grand jurors' names and purported home addresses were posted on fringe websites, and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis's home and family information circulated as well. Criminal threat charges followed against some individuals. None of that pulled the addresses back offline.

What still leaks

• County court records. Fulton, DeKalb, Cobb, and Gwinnett publish detailed online dockets. Addresses appear in the body of many civil, divorce, and traffic filings unless they were redacted when filed. Federal cases on PACER sit outside Georgia law entirely.
• Property records. County clerks record deed transfers and tax assessors publish ownership and tax data online. Section 50-18-78 lets an officer request removal, but it runs county by county and only after you ask.
• DMV records. Your driver's license and vehicle registration data is governed by the federal Driver's Privacy Protection Act, which limits who can obtain it. Brokers who pull it for an unpermitted purpose can be sued, but the limit is not self-enforcing.
• Voter rolls. Georgia voter registration is public record and lists a residential address. The Safe at Home program offers protected registration for eligible participants.
• Out-of-state and commercial brokers. Spokeo, Whitepages, BeenVerified, and similar sites pull from national aggregators and are not bound by Georgia's open-records rules.

A home address on any of these sources ties your name to where you live and to the people in the house with you. That is the path the job can take home.

Laws that work for you here

• O.C.G.A. §50-18-72(a)(21): exempts a public employee's home address, phone numbers, Social Security number, and family identity from Open Records Act release. File with each agency that holds your records so those fields are withheld.
• O.C.G.A. §50-18-78: written request to a city or county to remove your home address and phone from property records posted online. The government must provide a request form.
• House Bill 199 (2025): lets a current or former judge, or their spouse, ask government offices to restrict a home address, phone number, and property or tax records from public disclosure.
• Driver's Privacy Protection Act: federal law limiting who can obtain your personal information from state DMV records.
• Daniel Anderl Judicial Security and Privacy Act: federal law that lets federal judges require brokers and agencies to take down their personal information.
• Safe at Home program: substitute-address program run by the Secretary of State for survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking, and human trafficking. Officers qualify only if they are also a covered victim.

What we handle that the state doesn't

Georgia's laws close the agency disclosure path. They do not touch the brokers. We find where your information is published across the people-search and data-broker sites, file removal requests, and keep checking. Records like these come back after a property sale or a new court filing, so when yours reappears, we file again.