Privacy, An Issue of Church Security, Part 2

14 November 2009 One Comment

In part one of this series of privacy policy and it’s relation to the church, I explored a scenario that can very easily happen in the theo-political climate of today.

Many years ago before the Internet became the mainstream phenomenon that evolved into a necessary part of life, the average citizen only had to worry about receiving “junk mail” mailed sporadically and the actual theft of a credit card.

However, as computers and databases advanced in technology and online e-commerce created the storage of private and personal information easier and cheaper, the rise of cyber crimes and identity theft created a new sense of vulnerability that for the first time, created an situation where defending and protecting yourself was very hard to impossible.

It was because of this growing concern that many online merchants and many organizations with Internet web pages began to develop and implement a concept called “Privacy Policy”. Privacy policy is defined by Wikipedia as:

“A legal document that disclose how a party retains, processes, discloses, and purges customer’s data… Privacy policies usually contain details of what personal information is collected, how the personal information may be used, the persons to whom the personal information may be disclosed, the security measures taken to protect the personal information,…”

Sounds very good doesn’t it? In reference to most companies, the statement was written in the name of truth, good faith, and integrity and followed through. However, there were some companies that behind the scenes, found a way to “loophole” around the concept of privacy policy….

Corporate partnerships

There were the promises to protect your personal contact information by refusing to sell or disclose your personal contact information. However, in the fine print of some privacy policies, there was the caveat that the company reserved the right to give your personal contact information to “corporate partners” in order to send out e-mails, phone calls, and junk mail for their products and services. At one time, it was heavily rumored that some internet service provider would become “corporate partners” with businesses ranging from online retail outlets to seedy internet smut peddlers to the point of knowing in advance the e-mails being sent out and writing scripts to force the e-mail in your inbox to where their “spam filter” would bypass it and let it through.

Since we have already established in part one of this series that there is now a dire need for churches to implement privacy policy measures in place for the purpose of information safeguarding, we can now ask some serious questions:

Does a church need to disclose a sense of confidence to potential church members in their church membership classes that there is some privacy policy in effect prohibiting church elders, staff, and members from giving / selling the personal contact information of church members with discipline processes in place for those that do sell / give out personal private information?

If a church admits up front that at they do sell or give out personal contact information to “like-minded ministries” (this is a ‘shady’ area but I am NOT talking about district / regional / or national headquarters of a denomination that the church is submitted to), should a church give the church members the right to “opt-out” of not wanting their personal contact information disclosed to like-minded third-party ministries?

Does a church need to incorporate a privacy policy upon it’s members prohibiting them from giving out and selling church directories and have the authority to enact church discipline upon those that do give / sell church directories?

Are we at a point now to where in the name of security, information safeguarding, and identity theft protection, we need to do away with the concept of church directories and force the exchange of information to be directly done between the two willing parties who want to be friends, interested in a ministry opportunity, and / or have needs to fulfill?

To me, the answer to the questions above are an outstanding “Yes”. To me, if a church does not have privacy policy procedures in place to safeguard personal contact information and gives out that information freely, we have an action done that is not only unethical; but morally wrong, and also a severe breach of member privacy to the point of negligence. If a church does decide to sell / give out information, you as the church member should have the right to ‘opt-out’ of the church’s list that is sold or given out.

We need to ask ourselves these questions:

Who lives at your residence?

Who pays for your phone bill?

Who pays for your internet access and the e-mail as part of internet access?

The answer:

YOU DO

And since you pay for these things, you should have the right to tell a church that your personal contact information is not and will not be given out nor sold by any church member and/or church employee. If a church does not have the ability to enforce privacy safeguards, maybe the only alternative is to quit publishing church directories and force the one-on-one interaction of two individuals to exchange personal contact information for themselves.

On the other side of the equation, if an non-profit organization freely receives church directories and mailing lists gleaned from old church directories (from those desperate and pragmatic people) without even asking for them, it would be in the best interest and the proper ethical action for that non-profit organization to reject the idea of adding these addresses to their current mailing lists.

But then again… Christianity right now is in a state of persecution complexes, martyr mentalities, divine desperations, and pragmatic power struggles in the name of ‘the culture war’ to the point of using ‘situational ethics’ to justify their actions. We saw the same desperation in the 1990′s, now we see it again heading into the 2010′s.

Ladies and gentlemen…. “Loophole Liturgy” is in vogue again.

I have received e-mails from people who claim that this has happened to them with the motive, mindset, and modus operandi ranging from churches “needing extra money”, a church member’s brother starts a new business and sends out flyers to promote his business, to churches circumventing 501c3 laws for theo-political gain by funneling the information to the sister of an elder’s wife to where “last-name” traceability is harder to perform and guiding her into the process of selling the church directory.

I do not care if somehow, someone has the nerve and audacity to justify this action as “loopholes for Jesus”. If someone is looking for “loopholes” to attempt to alleviate their personal guilt and convince themselves that they did this “in the name of God”; and therefore believe that they are not wrong in their actions but will receive heavenly rewards for their ‘deeds’, then the intent from the very beginning (in my opinion) is one of deception and willful misconduct.

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Let’s travel back in time to the early 1990′s

Many churches ago before attending and eventually joining the church that I am a member of now, I was a member of a church where it was discovered and eventually admitted (by an elder who had left) that the church elders sold the church member directories for extra money going to the church treasury to various local, regional and national Christian non-profit 501c3 organizations for the purpose of pilfering contact information for mailing and telephone lists (this was pre Internet / e-mail) for their specific agendas who also in turn sold this information to other Christian organizations (this was pre “corporate Partnerships”) to populate their mailing and phone lists.

How did I become suspicious of this?

In the only church directory I ever allowed my name to be a part of, my last name was accidentally mis-typed and I received the junk mail with the mistyped last name, ranging from surveys, petitions, and please for money to “fight the good fight”. Also, I received phone calls addressing me with the incorrect pronunciation of my last name (phonetically similar to the mis-typing of my last name) wanting me to participate in surveys, petitions, and send in money. The plethora of junk mail in addition to the rude, nasty, and condescending phone calls I received when I politely refused to talk to the Christian telemarketers, participate in their surveys, and sign petitions was very nauseating to me coming from so-called Christians (after doing research, I discovered that many of these Christian organizations did not use Christians for telemarketing purposes). It took me around five years to eventually filter myself off those mailing and phone lists through non-responses of their mailings and also not returning phone calls left on my answering machine.

I remember that many of these e-mails and phone calls came from either right-to-life organizations or from Christian legal defense ‘ministries’ (I use that term loosely)

Ever since then, I have taken measures to prevent the giving out and selling of my personal contact information in church settings and also nationally via the Do-Not-Call registry. When I subscribed to magazines, I would read the fine print in the “Circulation” section of the magazine and sent my “opt-out” request to some PO box asking that my name not be sold or given out and to remove me from these lists.

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Let’s go back to the year 2009.

In the wake of the “national health care’ bill in Congress, Christian media started to once again “alert” us in the name of “information and analysis” the evils of this bill and we need to do ‘by any means necessary” whatever it takes to defeat this bill in the name of God and in the name of saving this “Christian nation”. A “political” issue now became a “theo-political” issue. Your viewpoint in their minds determined the difference between ‘real” and “fake” Christian. Your viewpoint in their minds determined where you would spend eternity in the afterlife.

Guess what happened???

The phone calls, the junk mail (looking like Government social security checks, looking like FedEx Next Day Air envelopes, looking like the electricity bill…) and now in the Internet Age, e-mails started flooding in. One “family” type of “ministry” called my answering machine four times in five days at approximately 11:30 AM each time wanting me to do a survey.

Based on my past experience, what was the thought that came into my mind? OH NO, not again. Not another church who is “desperate”, especially one with the word “Evangelical” in the name wondering if the definition of that word changed from “evangelism” to “theo-politics”…

So I e-mailed my church and inquired if my personal contact information was given out or sold and was assured that no one on staff or the elders had done this.

I believe them… I want to believe them…
But as Led Zeppelin said in the song “Stairway to Heaven”

….and it makes me wonder….

wonder if some church member might have……

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In part three of this article, I will be continuing to explore the topic of composing a privacy policy and information safeguarding procedures in relation to church security and discussing various areas where privacy policy would be beneficial.