The Trump Jury Has a Doxing Problem

You’ve been asked to serve on the jury in the first-ever criminal prosecution of a United States president. What could possibly go wrong? The answer, of course, is everything.

A juror in former president Donald Trump’s ongoing criminal trial in New York was excused on Thursday after voicing fears that she could be identified based on biographical details that she had given in court. The dismissal of Juror 2 highlights the potential dangers of participating in one of the most politicized trials in US history, especially in an age of social media frenzies, a highly partisan electorate, and a glut of readily available personal information online.

Unlike jurors in federal cases, whose identities can be kept completely anonymous, New York law allows the personal information of jurors and potential jurors to be divulged in court. Juan Merchan, the judge overseeing Trump’s prosecution in Manhattan, last month ordered that jurors’ names and addresses would be withheld. But he could not prevent potential jurors from providing biographical details about themselves during the jury selection process, and many did. Those details were then widely reported in the press, potentially subjecting jurors and potential jurors to harassment, intimidation, and threats—possibly by Trump himself. Merchan has since blocked reporters from publishing potential jurors’ employment details.

The doxing dangers that potential jurors face became apparent on Monday, day one of the proceedings. An update in a Washington Post liveblog about Trump’s trial revealed the Manhattan neighborhood where one potential juror lived, how long he’d lived there, how many children he has, and the name of his employer. Screenshots of the liveblog update quickly circulated on social media, as people warned that the man could be doxed, or have his identity revealed publicly against his will, based solely on that information.

“It's quite alarming how much information someone skilled in OSINT could potentially gather based on just a few publicly available details about jurors or potential jurors,” says Bob Diachenko, cyber intelligence director at data-breach research organization Security Discovery and an expert in