Well, new questions are circulating around a law meant to protect judicial public servants by shielding their home addresses.

It was born out of tragedy.

The brutal murder of U.S. District Court Judge Esther Salas's son at their home in 2020.

But as Ted Goldberg reports, the law's full range of implications are still being sorted out, including whether it interferes with the First Amendment freedom of speech, not only the life that will this is lost, but the lives of so many that can and will be lost, can and will be lost if we don't treat judicial security privacy.

And with the attention and the respect and the caution that it deserves.

District Court Judge Esther Salas is the driving force behind Daniel's law.

It gives legal protection to the personal information of active or retired judges, prosecutors or people in law enforcement.

Three years ago, a lawyer angry about one of Salazar's rulings showed up to her North Brunswick home, shot her husband and killed her son, Daniel This gentleman, because of open source information, was able to track my every move.

He knew my church.

He knew my husband's office.

He had a list of Daniel's baseball games.

It is sad and unfortunate that this network came to be because Daniel was lost.

But if we prevent one tragedy like this from happening in the future, we've done something worthwhile.

Prominent legal figures from around the state gathered to talk about Daniel's Law at Stockton University yesterday and described how New Jersey's team of risk factors pulls information from public facing websites.

If you have moved and you've got a deed out there that shows you live in a new house now that may be discoverable, we can help to block that.

We can help to redact that resident's information for you.

About 8000 people in the legal and law enforcement communities have signed up to protect their personal information out of 15,000 people who are eligible.

Retired assignment judge Julio Mendez served as a moderator and said Daniel's law is a good start to fix a massive concern.

The Internet is a cesspool and the dark web is constantly, you know, gathering additional information.

So it's almost impossible to keep up.

But for some, Daniel's law raises a larger First Amendment question.

Does blocking addresses of certain people interfere with the freedom of speech?

The discussion came one day after State Attorney General Matt Platkin declined to get involved in a case where a journalist allegedly published the address of North Brunswick's police director.

Transparency and Accountability.

Our lofty goals and good ones, but risking people's safety in their own homes, let alone their courtrooms.

Or walking to their cars at night is not the price that we should be paying for it.

I'm all for, you know, First Amendment rights, speaking and protesting.

But do it at the courthouse And I'm all for appealing if indeed there's a ruling that I may have erred on.

Without Daniel's law.

Judge Salas worries about the safety of other judges and what that means for American democracy.

I think it is vital for democracy.

I think we need to protect our judiciary.

We need to send a strong message to would be attackers that in America we do not tolerate this type of intimidation.

We only need to look to history Nazi Germany, Hungary, Venezuela, the toppling of democracies that they probably never saw coming.

A similar bill protecting federal judges was signed into law last year by President Joe Biden.

But it doesn't protect the 30,000 or so judges at the state or local level that might have to be addressed state by state, with New Jersey's Daniel's Law possibly serving as an example for others.

For NJ Spotlight News, I'm Ted Goldberg.