October 03, 2003
Nettle vs ACLU, Part 2
by Brian DearIf you recall, Part One of this story ended with a reply from Nadine Strossen, the president of the ACLU, letting me know that she'd delegated my concerns to her very capable staff. Fine. So I waited to hear from her capable staff. This week, I finally did.
But first, I got more junk mail, this time another complete set of junk from the Sierra Club. While I know the ACLU doesn't believe the Sierra Club got my name and address from them, I am satisfied (based on the investigation I undertook, contacting a number of nonprofits who confirmed they got my info from ACLU) that indeed that's precisely what happened. But there's no point wasting time over that; we'll just have to agree to disagree. So how do deal with Sierra Club junk mail? There are number of ways. Here's one.
1. One Way of Dealing With Sierra Club Junk Mail
I was disappointed to see another envelope from the Sierra Club, complete with a typeface on the front of the envelope making it look like it was handwritten. I opened the envelope. Inside was a cover letter, a flyer about near-extinct species (which made me think, "Once you annoy a potential contributor, they're lost forever..."), an ad for some outdoor hiking gear, two stickers, a membership card, two petitions I was supposed to sign, and a bunch more items. I must confess I didn't read any of it. |
Imagine how much money Sierra Club would save if they didn't cut down so many trees to send out such huge volumes of unwanted junk mail to people who in good faith joined the ACLU not realizing doing so meant they'd be bombarded with solicitations from all these other nonprofits? |
Oops. Big mistake. They sent a Business Reply Mail letter with the postage already paid. Now, what should be done about that. Let's see. Huh? Who me? What evil grin? |
First, pile all the junk mail together. Ah, but notice they've made the return envelope slightly smaller than the junk that was sent. |
Not a problem. Scissors to the rescue! |
Trim off edges so all the stuff will fit in the return envelope. |
Jam it all in there. Loud organ music and mutters of "muu-ha-ha-ha" optional. |
Ah, now doesn't that feel better? Some day next week, some poor schlepper at the Sierra Club will be scratching their head. Note the simulated handwritten plea at the upper left. My reply: "If you stopped sending out unwanted junk mail you would save even more much-needed funds." |
2. The ACLU Responds
As I said, I got a reply from Nadine's capable staff. Specifically, a reply from Anthony Romero. Here it is:
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Subject: FW: Responding to your ACLU membership renewal letter Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2003 11:13:45 -0400 From: "Anthony Romero" <xxxxxxx@xxxx.xxx> To: <xxxxxxxx@xxxx.xxx> Cc: "Nadine Strossen" <xxxxxx@xxxx.xxx>, "Gina Schmeling" <xxxxxx@xxxx.xxx>, "Geraldine Engel" <xxxxxx@xxxx.xxx> Dear Brian, I am glad Nadine copied me on her message to you. Thank you for taking the time to inform us of your concerns. You can be sure that we take the privacy of our members very seriously, and I appreciate your suggestions for improvement. To be clear, we do not "immediately" share your name with anyone. If you received the junk mail you describe before you received an acknowledgement from us then it could not have been a result of our sharing your information with others. Nonetheless, we have placed your name on a "do not share list" and will be considering your suggestions and others as we move forward in our attempts to improve our membership and internet services. I do hope that we will soon be able to count you once again among our membership. We need your help now more than ever. Again, thank you for writing. Sincerely, Anthony |
Note how Romero says your suggestions for improvement. These aren't suggestions. This is common sense. I shouldn't need to even point out a problem such as this to an organization as knowledgable about privacy issues and concerned for the privacy of Americans. This is simple, basic good "netizenship", for lack of a better term. Like I've said before, if there's any organization that should be a model for practicing what it preaches, it's the ACLU!
Of course, I had to write back, to educate Mr. Romero further and make sure he and the very capable staff of the ACLU fully understands that a) they're wrong in this instance, and b) they can't blow me off that easily and expect me not to do anything about it. Besides, don't they want me back as a member?
But first, I had to check something out at the Sierra Club.
3. Some Kudos to the Sierra Club
See, it's not all bad news. I wanted to point out some really good things the Sierra Club does, that the ACLU does not. Dear ACLU staff, if you are reading this, please pay attention.
I went to the Sierra Club website, and followed the buttons and links to the page which allowed me to sign up online. Here's the full-length page as it appeared in my browser (apologies for the size of this image):
What I would like to call to your attention is a portion of the form about 1/3 of the way down the page:
Now what do we have here. Hmm. It looks to be pretty much exactly what the ACLU needs to do to fix their own online signup form once and for all.
Okay, so the user has to intentionally opt-out of the information-sharing by clicking the checkbox, and select the "No" radio button to indicate they don't want any correspondence by email, but at least the Sierra Club was good enough to let its potential new members decide these things for themselves.
Go look at the ACLU's signup form again. Note how the American Civil Liberties Union does not extend the same courtesy to its own potential new members. This is the crux of the problem. This is something the ACLU really needs to fix.
Some other Sierra Club observations, while I'm on the subject: the Sierra Club's signup form has no link to a privacy policy. That's an easily-correctible mistake. Also, the Sierra Club deserves another set of kudos for actually having a special page, linked to from their privacy policy, explaining opt-out in more detail.
4. Replying to Anthony Romero of the ACLU
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From: Brian Dear <xxxxxx@xxxx.xxx> Mr. Romero, Thanks for writing back. Let's cut right to the chase. The ACLU's online signup form does not give potential new members the ability to opt-out of having their personal contact information shared with unknown parties. I have pointed this out to your organization, so it now knows about it, in case it was not aware of it before. This is a highly deceptive practice, perhaps one quite inadvertent on the ACLU's part, but nonetheless one not at all in keeping with the organization's fine principles. If I come to the ACLU's website and decide to join the organization and show my support by sending you money, I should be able to do so knowing that I'm only sharing my information with the ACLU and not unknown parties --- if that is my wish. At the very least, the ACLU should provide a mechanism, for example, a checkbox, enabling potential new members to opt-out of such information-sharing activity if they so choose. Allow me to provide you with an example. I invite you to go look at the Sierra Club's online signup form. Here's a direct link: https://ww2.sierraclub.org/membership/ Scroll down just a bit and note how they offer two opt-outs right in the form itself. First, they ask, "May we correspond with you via e-mail?" and give the user the choice of "Yes" or "No." Then they ask, "From time to time, we make our mailing list available to other worthy organizations. If you prefer that your name not be included, please check here," followed by a checkbox. I couldn't have said it better myself. The ACLU needs to do precisely this kind of thing to earn the trust of its new members. By not doing so, what kind of message does that send? "Do as I say, but not as I do?" That doesn't sound like the ACLU. I am confident that after you consider this matter carefully and take a moment to look at how other worthy nonprofit organizations deal with this issue, you'll agree with me that a change to your online signup form is the good and right thing to do. And, as I've indicated previously, as soon as I see such changes on the form, I will gladly renew my ACLU membership and send you not $20, but $50. I am certain this will inspire many others to do the same. You know, I miss not having a valid ACLU membership card in my wallet. I really look forward to being a member again. The ball's in your court. Sincerely,
Brian Dear |
I'll post an update as soon as I've heard back from the ACLU.
As always, I welcome your thoughtful comments below.
UPDATE -- 1 December 2003:
See Part Three of this ACLU story for some great news!!!
Posted by brian at October 3, 2003 10:26 AM
You are a cheap bastard for only giving $20. Unbelievable. It seems to me like you're in a position to afford more than that. Author, master computer programmer....I'm sure you've got dough. Why do you have to be so cheap?
I get the same feeling based on your article regarding amazon.com's new search capabilities. Do you want to sell any of your obscure books or not? If so, best get them to the market, and stop crying about someone "ripping you off". You sound like some goddamn no-account patent lawyer.
Scoundrel.
Posted by: Randall Loffelmacher at October 24, 2003 09:01 AM"Soundrel? Scoundrel? I like the sound of that."
-- Han Solo, Star Wars
You may be interested to know that the Postal Service charges the recipient of business reply envelopes according to the weight of the envelopes. This means that when you stuff an envelope to the Sierra Club, they end up paying more to receive it. This is easy to abuse, and I'm all for selective abuse. But I'd rather target for-profit junkmailers like credit-card companies than nonprofits like the Sierra Club. I'd say returning the contribution card, which has your address on it, and writing "Please remove me from your mailing lists" on it in big red letters is fine with an outfit like the Sierra Club, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the United Farm Workers, etc. But stiffing them with heavy envelopes seems like more of a prank than an effective way to express both frustration and the specific desire to get off the lists of well-intentioned (albeit annoying) organizations. As for Citibank, Chase, MBNA, and so on (I'm just picking on credit-card companies, because they come to mind, but this extends to all sorts of for-profits), since they're not even pretending to be doing something useful and are only interested in their own maximum profit, I say stuff those envelopes. I've actually sent flattened catfood cans in their business reply envelopes, which weigh a lot for their size and send a pretty clear middle-finger message.
Posted by: Danny Holt at November 12, 2003 06:07 AM