The Openbaar Ministerie (OM) today demanded a 2-month prison sentence against a 56-year-old man from Katwijk. The man is suspected of doxing: distributing personal data with the aim of intimidating someone. Suspect did this through his X account.
On January 22, 2024, the chief public prosecutor of the Hague District Attorney's Office reported doxing. In messages that the defendant posted on X on December 22 and 23, 2023, a prosecutor was mentioned by name. Those messages included a photograph, address and phone number.
According to the prosecution, the purpose of posting these posts is clear: harassment. The defendant's purpose in posting the posts was to instill fear in the officer, cause serious nuisance, or seriously hinder him in the performance of his profession.
Doxing has been criminalized since January 1, 2024. Defendant made the posts about one week before, and did not delete the posts after January 1, 2024. He knew what doxing is and what it can do to someone.
The prosecutor addressed this during the indictment: "The prosecution finds that the defendant distributed and made these posts available with the intent to intimidate. It was already sufficiently foreseeable for the defendant before January 1, 2024 that his conduct at the end of 2023 could give rise to criminality after January 1."
The officer made a parallel with the offline world. In that comparison, the posts on X can be compared to two posters behind windows in defendant's home that are readable from the street. These posters were put up on December 22 and 23, and are still there after January 1, 2024, even though defendant knows that hundreds of people are looking or have looked at the posters. By leaving the poster hanging, the content is being disseminated and made available to others.
"Doxing infringes on a person's private life," the prosecutor said at the hearing. "This can lead to online and to offline consequences for the person concerned. This is because publishing personal information can lead to action by others."
The officer also spoke of a potentially undermining effect on the democratic rule of law. "Sharing personal data online can lead to a wide reach. This means that there is a source for malicious persons who would want to escalate with expressions of a potentially even more intimidating nature. In this case, there was no evidence that this effect occurred. Fortunately. That, however, is not due to the defendant. It could have ended differently."
