A.C.L.U.'s Search for Data on Donors Stirs Privacy Fears

The New York Times > National > A.C.L.U.'s Search for Data on Donors Stirs Privacy Fears

This article exposes ACLU for just another organization that whines one thing and does something different. As someone who has donated money to ACLU even while being a very poor graduate student, I not just concerned for my own privacy in view of the organization's idiocy, but have lost any desire to give them any money. Ever. Even the sad attempts of Michale Meyers to claim that the board knew nothing about this, are pathetic and laughable. The board just expected not to get caught. Richard Nixon didn't expect to get caught either. ACLU must understand that "cultivating donors" is rather different from collecting information that is perceived private even if it is publically available. One of the major points of the fight for privacy right now stands with that issue - the issue that there is a difference between legal privacy and privacy through obscurity, yet we, as people, have a hard time understanding which information about us is what. THAT is the problem, the problem that as humans we simply lack enough foresight and fall into corporate promotional traps. The excuse that "this is no different from doing a Google search" is moot in this case!

Much of ACLU's donor pool are very smart people who are very aware of these issues and I doubt that few of them will miss this one ... It's too bad, but this is an example of an organization forgetting what it stands for and falling for the carrot of information bloat.