And if the police actually catches the accused and puts them in jail, is that kidnapping? Most verbs have far more semantics than just the most basic before/after state diff.
Its almost always associated with a private person (ie not police or anyone of a judicial system) releasing personal information with malicious intent.
As the person above you said, semantics are important. This is a judicial system specifically searching for a person they believe to have caused severe criminal harm.
As you said, in this particular case, the respective judicial entities purposefully released the personal information with the intent of arresting both. Whether that is successful or not remains to be seen but that's a different story.
For me personally, I understand doxing to be the release of personal information with malicious, indirect intent. For example, hoping that an angry mob will find the home of a person and attack them, send the person death threats through the post, etc.
Assuming a decently functional justice system, I don't consider an arrest warrant a malicious intent.
"Doxxing" certainly doesn't carry a negative connotation in that usage. Unless you live in a culture where torturing domesticated animals is a good thing.
ANd I recall that, before that, hackers would doxx other hackers in the 90s in order to get them arrested. Again, that seems like the exact same usage as here: tying a pseudonym to an IRL for purposes of law enforcement.
If it's negative depends on if you think they deserve the hostility.
In my experience, plenty people use "doxxing" to refer to their own actions positively. There are even calls to action: "let's doxx him"
See the canonical example of this going wrong: the Reddit 'investigation' of the Boston Bomber, where someone was misidentified, doxxed, and their family was harassed.
Of course, law enforcement is capable of making the same mistakes. But ideally they have better safeguards, and victims of their negligence have much better recourse.
I disagree. Tying a pseudonym to an IRL persona for purposes of law enforcement is a part of an official investigation.
Doxxing is specifically non-government unmasking and dissemination of that tie for extrajudicial purposes, almost always for harassment. There is a world of difference between them and we should not fudge them together with terminology. My 2c.