*** Democracies Online Newswire - http://www.e-democracy.org/do *** ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 4 Sep 2000 19:45:28 -0700 From: b!X <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Using Online Petitions for Real-World Activism REDRESSING GRIEVANCES: USING ONLINE PETITIONS FOR REAL-WORLD ACTIVISM A Global Effort to Eradicate Know-nothings (GEEK Force) Memorandum Version 1.0 (Originally Prepared on 04 September 2000 for eActivism.org) by b!X <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Preamble Online petitions of one sort or another have been around for years. Ranging in levels of sophistication and usefulness from the ubiquitous and never-ending "Save PBS" email chain-letter petition (a type of online petition we will not be dealing with in this memorandum) to the Center for Democracy and Technology-organized petition waved around the Senate floor as proof of netizen opposition to the Communications Decency Act (or, indeed, this author's grassroots Hands Off! the Net petition effort which inspired the CDT campaign), it is clear that using the speed and efficiency of computer-mediated communications in effort to petition our governments (or our corporations) for a redress of grievances seems an almost natural form of activist technology. However, with few exceptions, online petitions are all but inconsequential. In fact, they tend to be poorly thought out, unorganized, and politically impotent. This memorandum, prepared as a courtesy for eActivism.org, will attempt to address these problems and present at least a framework for solving them. It should be noted that, at least for the purposes of the initial version of this memorandum, the issues discussed are not presented in any particular order of importance. Petitions vs. Statements of Principle Clear distinctions must be made between targeted, time-sensitive petitions on the one hand and general, open-ended statements of principle on the other. There should be no confusion between the two. Petitions must be directed at specific individuals or groups, should be geared toward accomplishing a specific goal or set of goals, and should remain open for signatures only for a clearly-defined and limited time period, at the end of which the petition should be considered closed, and then delivered to the appropriate recipients (and, it is important to stress, to no one else). Statements of principle, however, may be more general in nature, aimed only at enunciating a set of beliefs (rather than towards a specific individual or group), and can remain open for signatures indefinitely (and, in fact, should also include some mechanism for a signatory to remove their name should their position change), during which time they remain available online as a public record. Geography Matters (So Do Reams of Paper) Petitions must be structured so that real-world geographic and postal information is required from signatories. As a political reality, targets of petitions will generally not care who you are in cyberspace. Like it or not, politics is geographical. Petitions that require nothing but an email address should be considered a waste of time. For similar reasons, the Internet should be used only to collect petition signatures, not to deliver the completed petition itself. Politicians, CEOs, and other public figures will be impacted more by the postal delivery of a box full of printed-out signatures than by an easily deleted email full of names (or, for that matter, an easily ignored email with an URL pointing to the petition online). This may be the single greatest obstacle to affecting a meaningful online petition service, because it requires a source of funds to pay for postal delivery of completed petitions. Verifiability (Email Confirmation vs. User Accounts) Some attempt must be made to ensure that the person signing the petition is who they claim to be. For example, sending via email a request for confirmation after someone has signed a petition would at least help prevent fraudulent uses of someone else's email address. Of course, this does nothing to provide verifiability of the signer's geographical or postal information, but it at least offers an initial comfort level. In addition, or as an alternative, an online petition site could provide a mechanism for user accounts, enabling each user to fill out their geographical and postal information only once, during the registration process, and sign petitions from that moment forth simply by providing their username and password. It is debatable whether, under a user account system, it is then still necessary or desirable to request confirmation via email for each petition signed. Further along the spectrum of complexity is to add to the username/password combination a PIN number (much as ICANN is using for their At-Large elections), in which each user is sent their PIN number via their postal address. This adds one more level of verifiability, but would also require some sort of financial structure to pay for it. Privacy Signatories must be clearly informed what will happen with all of the identifying personal information they provide in the course of signing a petition. Ideally, any privacy policy should state that such information will be revealed only to the clearly-indicated recipients of any given petition (understanding, of course, that the policy cannot place limits upon what the recipients do with the information). Special care should be given to limit what sorts of signatory information for each petition is displayed on the petition website. It is probably acceptable, at the least, to display aggregate information, such as the number of signatories and their geographical distribution. However, it is probably best not to go much further than, say, displaying the name, city, and state of each signatory. Any privacy policy should also cover the non-disclosure to any third-party of information contained within user accounts, should they be utilized (except where such information is being delivered to a given petition's recipient as part of that petition). This memorandum is copyright © 2000 the Global Effort to Eradicate Know-nothings (GEEK Force). Use is permitted, with attribution. - b!X <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Global Effort to Eradicate Know-nothings <http://www.geekforce.org> *** Please send submissions to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** *** To subscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** *** Message body: SUB DO-WIRE *** *** To unsubscribe instead, write: UNSUB DO-WIRE *** *** Please forward this post to others and encourage *** *** them to subscribe to the free DO-WIRE service. ***
