· Who keeps supporter details in a campaign coalition ?? ·
Many of us have worked as part of a coalition in our campaigning activities, right? I think coalitions are great and can be very powerful when all of the members are willing to listen to each other and project a cohesive message to the public.
So, when supporters sign up to a campaign that is being managed by a coalition, who is responsible for the privacy of those supporters' details ... and which campaign partners can use the contact details to promote different campaigns in the future?
The answer seems to be "it depends". If it is clear to the supporter that they are signing up to receive information from both "X organisation" and "Y organisation" (or better still - given a choice as to whether they want to receive information from none, both or one of them), then it seems organisations are able to share supporters' details. Or at least that's what it seems. I am not a lawyer, so don't take my word for it.
Anyway, is seems wise to work out which organisation/s bear the responsibility of keeping supporters' details private, and which organisation/s are legally allowed to use the supporters' details for future campaigns *before* the campaign is launched. In particular, smaller campaign partners need to be aware of this, as they are often the organisations that don't have the resources or infrastructure to collect supporters' details online, and so they are often dependant on better-resourced counterparts to provide infrastructure for them.
Somebody (Kathleen via Gary?) bought this interesting interview from The ABC's The Law Report to my attention. The focus of this case study is on the joint campaign that Reproductive Choice Australia (RCA) and GetUp ran on the abortion drug RU486. In short, RCA found themselves unable to get supporters' details that were collected on the GetUp website during the campaign. Read the transcript with Dr Leslie Cunnold, President Reproductive Choice Australia; Brett Solomon, Executive Director, GetUp; and Professor Graham Greenleaf, Co-Director Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre, UNSW.
Friday April 4, 2008
Categories: Campaigning
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