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Privacy Your Rights Online

ACLU Reacts to Privacy Concerns 78

Posted by michael from the small-victories dept.
nettle writes "Back in September I began a series of commentaries about one person's experience signing up as a new member of the ACLU. I'd used their website to sign up, and was shocked to find my mailbox full of junk parcels, flyers, and personalized merchandise from dozens of nonprofit organizations like People for the American Way, Sierra Club, Americans for This, Americans for That, yadda yadda. I complained to the ACLU, having suspected that they had given out my contact info. So I wrote about the situation on my Nettle.com blog here and here and began a public correspondence with Anthony Romero, Exec Dir of ACLU, and Nadine Stossen, President of ACLU. Nadine promised they'd take action. I told her if they fixed the signup page on ACLU's website so that people could opt-out of ACLU's personal-info-sharing, I'd renew my membership. Well, Nadine kept her end of the bargain. Here's a screen capture of their new signup page. And my check to the ACLU goes out in today's mail! Blogs DO make a difference."
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ACLU Reacts to Privacy Concerns More

ACLU Reacts to Privacy Concerns

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  • and if they don't stop, I might have to start using Altavista instead of Google.

    google watch blogometer [google-watch.org]

    • Ah yes, that page. "Google doesn't put my NameBase results on top! So Google is evil! Wah!"

      There's some point where you have to realize that people aren't going to your site because it sucks [namebase.org].

      And when it comes to blogs, it seems that now if you even mention Google on LiveJournal you get some random person you don't know evangelizing their favorite Google alternative, claiming that Google gave them pop-up ads, banners, herpes, or whatever.

  • lesson learned by the ACLU... (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    don't piss off the hippies, they might get violent.

  • re: opt-out at nonprofits (Score:5, Informative)

    by bscott ( 460706 ) on Tuesday December 02, 2003 @05:36PM (#7612331)
    I've mentioned this story in the past, but it bears repeating here - even with good intentions, sometimes opt-out doesn't make much difference...

    I worked for several years at a well-known nationwide nonprofit charity, maintaining a donor database with an address list in the low 6 figures in length. For a variety of reasons, we had a lot of ongoing technical problems, especially when it came to address sharing with other nonprofits - long stories aside, there came a day when I was digging into the workings of an update query which effectively implemented the "Don't share my address" checkbox on the donation form. Turns out, for at least the past 3 years (starting prior to my tenure), it had been set up backwards. When I fixed it, some 16,000 records got updated... (and who knows, maybe the correction eventually propagated around the nonprofit community's mismash of list-exchange systems??)

    My point is, once your information gets out, consider it out for good. Everything from fuzzy wording of a privacy agreement to out-and-out unethical behavior (either as company policy, or due to a disgruntled employee or hacker attack) could cause your data to go where you don't want it to - or, it might just be a technical glitch somewhere deep in an under-tested program handled by an under-trained user.
    • It shouldn't be opt-out in the first place, the checkbox on the membership page should be unchecked by default. If I want marketing guff, I'll ask for it thanks.
      • > the checkbox on the membership page should be unchecked by default.

        That was supposed to be the case in our database as well. Again - good intentions, backed by inadequately trained people...
  • I get mail from groups like the Sierra Club, Planned Parenthood, the Democratic and Republican Party, etc.

    Looks like most nonprofit groups that rely on donations share addresses.

  • Get real (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Evro ( 18923 ) *
    Blogs DO make a difference.

    Bad press has always prompted organizations to right their wrongs, especially guys like the ACLU whose entire reasons for existence are moral in nature. I think you would expect them to change their ways if you point out their hypocrisy in a public forum, regardless of whether it's in a blog, a newspaper, or a billboard. This is by no means a "win" for blogs, it's just common sense.

    Just tired of people thinking "blogs" are something revolutionary. Nobody really cares.
  • What is the saying..... fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.

  • What I like... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Hard_Code ( 49548 ) on Tuesday December 02, 2003 @08:36PM (#7614064)
    ...is when you donate 10 bucks to an organization and then they proceed to blow that ten bucks on sending you keychains, notepads, organizers and calendars every few weeks for the indefinate future. I wish there was a check box like "take this $10 and be grateful and please limit your correspondence with me to ONE time per year of your choosing".

  • Good job (Score:1, Troll)

    by mbstone ( 457308 )
    Now see if you can get the ACLU to stand up for the rights of anybody who isn't black, female, gay, transgendered, or otherwise politically correct.

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