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Privacy Statement

The American Civil Liberties Union has created this privacy statement to demonstrate its firm commitment to privacy by informing site visitors of the ACLU's data collection and storage practices, and guidelines for use of visitor data.


User Tracking and Data Capture Practices

Our servers collect and aggregate user information site-wide, including anonymous site statistics, such as the number of views of each page. We log domain names and/or IP addresses of visitors (such as umich.edu, aol.com, 209.168.1.1, etc.), which permits us to know "where" visitors are from, or what access service they use, without knowing their individual identities. Because we do not require users to register with us, this "host level" tracking is our primary basis for assessing traffic patterns.

On certain pages such as the ACLU Membership Form, we give users the option of providing us with names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and other personal information, and various other kinds of details. This more personal information is gathered only with users' knowing and active permission and participation. 

The ACLU website does not use any cookies that are automatically written to your computer's hard drive or retained by the ACLU or our vendors. 

We review and discard the information in some cases (e.g. IP address logs for file transfers), while in others we may use the information to tailor our users` Web experience in the form of custom content or results drawn from databases. On some pages, users can sign up to receive additional information by e-mail through an e-mail subscription service (as discussed below), or by other means, including postal mail. Personal information that has been volunteered to us may also be combined with data from third parties, such as Congressional district maps, to improve our services to members. No such combining will be done for marketing purposes.

We may at some point share user information, including e-mail addresses, with our local offices for the above named purposes. 

E-mail addresses of visitors and members are never exchanged with other organizations except as provided for in the section on email list subscriptions below.


Exchange of ACLU Member Addresses

Individual information about website visitors, including e-mail addresses, is never shared with third parties.

However, the names and postal addresses of ACLU members, including those who join through the ACLU Freedom Network website, may be exchanged or rented to other organizations or publications under the procedures outlined below. Members who join through the website are provided with an opportunity to opt out of this exchange.

Like most other non-profit membership organizations, the ACLU obtains the names of potential new members by renting the membership lists or subscriber lists of like-minded organizations and publications.

Sometimes, instead of paying the rental fee, ACLU exchanges its list with that of another organization.

Whether by exchange or rental, the lists are governed by very strict privacy procedures, as recommended by the U.S. Privacy Study Commission. All exchanges are made on a "blind" basis, as follows: Lists are never given into the physical possession of the organization which has rented or exchanged them. This safeguard is necessary to prevent one organization from knowing who the members of any other organization are. Instead, usually through a list broker, the list, either in the form of labels or tape, is sent to a mail house which prepares the mailing without our ever seeing who is addressed. The only time we get possession of a name from one of these lists is when the person receiving our invitation to join responds by sending our return envelope back to us.

If the receipt of duplicate mailings is too burdensome, you may wish to consider writing to each of the organizations to which you belong and publications to which you subscribe, requesting that your name be eliminated from lists made available for exchange or rental. The ACLU always honors such requests, and we believe that the organizations with which we exchange or rent lists honor them also, although of course we can't guarantee the actions of outside organizations.