Written By: Bill - Date published: 11:50 am, December 16th, 2013 - 100 comments

Categories: election 2014, petition, political education, referendum - Tags: contact details, petitions, stupidity

Did Mike Williams just suggest (about 19 minutes in) that the Greens and Labour Parties utilise the email addresses they gathered from the petition against asset sales in their election campaigns?! I sincerely hope he wasn’t channeling an idea that has any traction within the Labour Party machine.

Just to be absolutely clear on this. I did a lot of political activism in the past. And sometimes that involved gathering people’s email addresses or whatever on petitions and so on. Any thought of using those contact details to canvas on other matters, or even associated matters, was rightly so off the cards as to be unthinkable. If there is a desire to use collected contact details, then the simple inclusion of a tick box for permission to contact should be included on any form. Otherwise…no. Don’t do it. It’s that simple.

I believe Michael Tritt of Greenpeace is learning why as he tries to defend his organisation’s use of petition details to fund raise. Now sure, Mike Williams isn’t quite in the loop these days, but I hope the relevant people within Labour and the Greens are paying attention and disavow themselves of any such notion.

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