Online Privacy Statement

Effective as of: November 14, 2006

The American Civil Liberties Union of Washington and American Civil Liberties Union of Washington Foundation, jointly referred to in this Online Privacy Statement as ACLU of Washington and Foundation, are committed to protecting the privacy of visitors to our website. This Online Privacy Statement describes how we treat all user data collected during your visit to our Site, both anonymous data and personally identifying data.

From time to time we may revise this Online Privacy Statement. If we do make changes, we will post a notice on our home page for 30 days that the Online Privacy Statement has been modified and provide a link to the revised Online Privacy Statement.

Types of Data We Collect and How It is Used. In order to provide a useful, secure Site to our visitors, the ACLU of Washington and Foundation collect some specific information. Information about your computing environment is collected to improve our communications and to ensure the integrity and security of our Site. Specific contact information is gathered with your consent where required to support your interactions with the ACLU of Washington. Sometimes we use third party service providers for advocacy, event ticketing and registration, etc. In these instances, we take care to obtain contracts with our vendors that protect your privacy.

Information about your Computing Environment. Like all websites, we may routinely collect some basic information about your computer and access to our website. This information includes: the externally-visible numerical Internet protocol (IP) address of the computer you are using; the browser software you used to access our Site; your operating system; the date and time you accessed our site; and the URL of the website from which you linked directly to our Site. This information helps us provide a website that operates on different computer systems. We also may use this information to measure the number of visitors to different sections of our Site, to diagnose and correct system errors, and to improve our Site and to ensure the integrity and security of our site.

Cookies. Cookies are small pieces of text that are transferred either temporarily to your computer’s Random Access Memory (“Session Cookies”) or to your computer’s hard drive (“Long-term Cookies”). For some of our online forms and tools, session cookies are employed to help you use the Site. These temporary cookies are removed when you close your web-browser. We do not intend to use long-term cookies, but many Web tools employ them by default. If you find that we have set a Long Term Cookie, please contact us.

Personal Information you may provide. If you choose to make a request through our website, we may require you to provide personal information to process that request. We don’t automatically put you on our membership rolls.

Common examples on our Site where we ask for Personal Information include:

• Becoming a member;
• Making a gift online;
• Ordering merchandise;
• Registering or buying tickets for a program;
• Contacting us through our online contact form;
• Signing up for our ACLU of Washington e-mail network; and
• Sending correspondence through the ACLU Site. (Just so you know, any information that you send to a public official or office, be it through our Action Center or not, becomes public once it reaches that public person or place.)

Membership and Donor Information. If you become a member or donate online, we will treat this information as we do all of our other membership and donor information. We mail information about the ACLU and civil liberties issues to our members and donors. Additionally, we allow other groups -- but never from any partisan political groups or groups whose programs are incompatible with ACLU policies -- to mail information to our members and donors through a third-party service provider. The other organization does not see personal information unless the individual responds to the mailing. Members and donors can opt out of having their mailing address used for this purpose. To do this, please contact our Development Department at 206.624.2184 or at 705 2nd Avenue, 3rd Floor, Seattle, WA 98104.

Aggregate Data. We use aggregate statistics to assess how useful and successful our website is. Examples of how we use aggregate data include:

• Collecting information on online transactions and activities. This allows us to know what topics our members are most interested in and acting on.
• Viewing statistics on computing environment information. This helps us to diagnose and correct system errors, and to improve our Site.

We use such aggregate data reporting to observe trends in how our Site is used. We do not dissect the data to obtain personally identifiable information.

Use of Service Providers. We may use third-party service providers to fulfill your orders, contact you on our behalf, operate portions of our site, or facilitate other activities. These service providers are contractually prohibited from sharing your Personal Information with any other third parties for any purpose, and from using it for any purpose other than providing services on our behalf.

Other Potential Disclosures. We may be required by law to disclose information about you to third parties if we are the subject of a valid subpoena or court order. If this happens, we will (unless it is legally prohibited) attempt to notify you that the request has been made before we release any information, to give you an opportunity to object. If you do not challenge the disclosure request, we may be legally required to turn over the information. Also, if we believe the request is legally improper, we may independently object and resist the request to the extent allowed by law.

We may also use or disclose Personal information in special circumstances when we, in good faith, believe it is necessary in order to insure the integrity and security of our site.

Security. We use industry-standard encryption technologies for the receipt and transfer of Personal information you submit to us on our Site, and only authorized personnel have access to the information. We follow best practices to protect the security and prevent unauthorized access to your Personal information.

How to contact us.

• Using our web contact form;
• By phone at 206.624.2184;
• By postal mail to ACLU of Washington, 705 2nd Avenue, 3rd Floor, Seattle, WA 98104.