A new law takes effect in Oregon on Friday that forces communications and social media companies to promptly comply with search warrants linked to stalking and domestic violence cases.
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The law, believed to be the first of its kind in the country, is named for Kristil Krug, a Colorado woman who was killed in 2023 after an elaborate stalking plot carried out by her husband. He was convicted of her murder last year and sentenced to life in prison.
Krug’s cousin Rebecca Ivanoff lives in Oregon and advocated for the law’s passage there and in Colorado, where she said she’s hopeful it can become law in 2027.
A former prosecutor who specialized in domestic violence cases, Ivanoff has described the legislation as “homicide prevention” and believes her cousin might still be alive had communications companies responded faster to search warrants in Krug’s case.
“Kristil is gone, but there are so many other survivors for whom this would make a difference,” she said in an interview earlier this week.
The new law requires communications companies to respond to warrants in five days and social media companies to respond within 72 hours. In addition to stalking and domestic violence crimes, the companies must also act in cases that involve violations of protective orders in stalking cases.
If the companies fail to comply with the deadlines, Ivanoff said, they can be held in contempt.
There were previously no legal deadlines in Oregon for companies to provide those responses, which often took weeks and sometimes months, according to a state assistant attorney general who testified in support of the bill in February.
Yet the emails, texts and social media messages can be critical to investigations and for victim safety, said the official, Sarah Sabri. Those delays hinder law enforcement and leave victims in a dangerous limbo, she said.
“In domestic violence and stalking cases, time is not neutral,” Sabri said. “Risk can escalate very rapidly.”
Researchers have previously documented the link between stalking and deadly intimate partner violence, with one 2018 study showing that it triples the risk of homicide.
Oregon’s new law “corrects a dangerous gap in the current system,” state Rep. Kevin Mannix, one of the chief sponsors of the legislation, said after it passed unanimously in Oregon’s House of Representatives in February. “This bill recognizes a simple truth: In domestic violence and stalking cases, speed saves lives.”
Speaking before a House committee, Mannix added that while search warrants typically help authorities investigate crimes that have already occurred, Kristil’s Law will allow them to identify stalkers and intervene earlier in the process to prevent violent outcomes.
Mannix said he hopes it will set a precedent across the country.
Local prosecutors praised the legislation. In a statement to NBC News, the president of the Oregon District Attorneys Association said it will “reduce the chance of tragedies like Kristil Krug’s from occurring in Oregon.”
Brant Wolf, executive vice president of the state association that represents telecom companies, said that while its members initially had concerns with the legislation, they reached a satisfactory resolution.
“Our members were happy to work with the proponents of Kristil’s Law to make sure the legislation passed,” he said.
A spokesman for Meta, which owns Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, declined to comment. Google did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for the company previously told NBC News that it recognized “the critical importance of maintaining flexibility” in its responses to search warrants.
In Krug’s case, Ivanoff said that her cousin — whom her family described as “a fighter and a true force” — did everything she could to protect herself: She maintained a detailed “stalker log” that she provided to law enforcement, ran drills with her children on what to do if the stalker showed up, installed security cameras and began carrying a handgun.
“And she still got killed,” Ivanoff said.
While Krug was alive, authorities filed search warrants with communications companies that sought information about the increasingly terrifying messages the stalker was sending her, police records show. But those responses didn’t come until after Krug was fatally struck in the head and stabbed in her home on Dec. 14, 2023.
On the day of her death, investigators reached back out to the companies with an emergency request because of the homicide, according to the records. The companies responded within an hour with information that helped authorities determine that the messages had come not from an ex-boyfriend — as the sender made it seem — but from her husband, Daniel Krug.
“Had Kristil had access to that information,” Ivanoff said, “she would have been positioned to know that, quite literally, the call was coming from inside the house, and she could have made a safety plan that never would have allowed him to have the access to her that he did. Law enforcement would have had the evidence they needed to tie him to the stalking and make an arrest.”
Daniel Krug maintained his innocence and was convicted last year of first-degree murder, stalking and criminal impersonation.
Ivanoff said she embarked on her advocacy after a discussion about her cousin’s case with “Dateline” correspondent Josh Mankiewicz last summer. Though Ivanoff had no background in lobbying, her push for Kristil’s Law became reality with bipartisan support after a single five-week session in Oregon’s Legislature, where it was also approved by the state Senate with unanimous support.
Although California and Colorado have recently enacted laws that require social media companies to respond promptly to all search warrants, those laws would have done nothing for Krug, Ivanoff said, because her cousin’s case involved stalking via email and text message.
Though Ivanoff hoped for a quicker deadline in Kristil’s Law — she said she originally wanted companies to respond within in 48 hours — the compromise they landed on recognizes the urgency tied to stalking and domestic violence cases, she said.
Ivanoff told Oregon lawmakers in February that by voting yes, they would ensure her cousin did not die in vain.
“If she were here, she would want something positive to come out of what was a horrific experience for our family,” Ivanoff told NBC News. “She would not want any other victims to have to experience what she did, and this is a commonsense solution to a system-based failure. I think she’d be proud of this work.”