How to sign petitions and be politically involved (newbie)

Questions
1

I want some tips or elaboration how to best tackle petitions and other political acts.

I have signed petitions in the past and am seeing topics about signing petitions here, and similarly have contacted politicians but don’t how to continue doing this with my growing awareness of privacy/security/anonymity. The problem is, it seems political involvement in the conventional sense is at odds with privacy, because names and addresses are often involved.

It seems anonymity is out of the question, so my concern would be broader tracking and fingerprinting, as well as security.

I have been preparing for the closure of an old email address I had, and was trying to delete and update accounts associated with it, including petition sites. It seems the petition sites can be tricky to delete data from, to the point where I am not able to delete the data in time. Anything political seems to be difficult to pull back from. :face_with_steam_from_nose:

Any tips? Bear in mind that I am not in the EU, nor in a danger zone, but where I am privacy laws are not very robust.

1 Like
2

You could be politically involved and skip petitions. For example attend demonstration with a guy fawkes mask, clown mask, big sun glasses…

For petitions, usually it mean given you real name and adress and these will appear online.

3 Likes
3

Ephemeral email addresses and aliases are useful when being solicited by various entities for contact information in order to participate in a campaign.

4

Wait, why (is it “out of the question”)? Unless it’s asking for, like, specific ID number or, something… you can always just sign it for kicks?

To get rid of the urge, I use free money to gamble on Facebook Texas Holdem Poker, but if you’re into signing petitions then perhaps you can: “Download Tor Browser”, Tor Project | Download

P.S. Google Search <<

EDIT: And if you’re looking for some kind of tormail, https://tor.taxi/

1 Like
5

Oh, also… You may be young, I’ve no idea (!), but you should probably know that it’s all “fake”. Just btw! :slight_smile:

1 Like
6

Political action in a democracy is an inherently non-private activity and that’s a good thing. If one could anonymously participate it would open the door even wider to astroturfing and bots.

Signing a petition for a legal purpose (like ballot access for a candidate) requires actually identifying yourself because for them to be legally binding the signatories have to be real people from the district/state at issue.

I have signed petitions, and donated to political campaigns. I use my real name and contact information as that is the legal and ethical way to do so. I accept the loss of privacy as a deliberate positive trade off to participate in our democratic process.

If you don’t feel comfortable with that, you can register to vote as a non-partisan alignment and vote privately according to your conscience. There is nothing wrong with that.

4 Likes
7

You live in the USA I guess ?

In most countries people don’t register their political parties for voting.

Also, being polilicatly active incognito is ethical in many cases.

1 Like
8

In most U.S. states you can register with a party and also for most states, that is required to vote in a primary.

As for anonymous political activity, it depends. It’s ethical to go to a protest and not identify yourself. It’s not ethical to sign a (legally binding) petition or donate money anonymously. In fact in most cases it would also be illegal.

2 Likes
9
  • Post Office Box
  • A burner phone or VOIP number
  • Try changing letters in your name and use them as AKA/alias. “Casey with a K”

That’s about the extent of “private” you can do. And the post office one might not be accepted if the petition is legally binding.

1 Like
10

Long term lurker on the forums, but decided to make an account and contribute. I worked in Democratic campaigns for many years on the tech and data side, and I can tell you that with very very few exceptions (see below): online “petitions” and sign-ups are a data collection scheme, not a way to influence change.

The main players in the petition form space (Action Network, Bonterra/NGP, and Switchboard, and Scale to Win) can and do sell your data. They do not abide by their own privacy policies.

And even when the software companies themselves do not sell your data, when you sign any form for a (mainstream) Democratic campaign, that data is almost-immediately packaged up and sent to the campaign’s digital firm. Where it is then shared with all of their other clients. In theory campaigns pretend to have their own privacy policies, but these are often set up by interns at the aforementioned software companies the same day that a campaign decides they want to send texts.

This is why you get all these random Democrat texts and emails. Your file is marked as being an “active” participant.

Main exception: organizations where you want to actively get involved and the online form you’re signing facilitates that (like a union or local chapter of something). But the same disclosure about them selling your data applies (I know of two separate privacy orgs that are currently trying to build open-source Action Network alternatives right now because of this).

I can (and probably will) write a lot more on this at some point, and I can provide extensive receipts. Seeing all of this at my job for years is why I quit campaigns and became a privacy evangelist. I feel guilt at the harms I helped perpetuate in exchange for a paycheck.

I can’t make a recommendation to you, but I will tell you as someone who worked in the space, I do not sign these forms and nor do any of my friends who also left the industry.

Also very important note: my experience is with Dem campaigns, but the other side is doing this just as much (or more). Dem campaigns are just what I have experience with and where I know all the main offenders.

For some reason having footnotes causes an error, but here’s notes:

Note on Switchboard: Switchboard is likely the worst assailant in the space. They are partially owned by Grassroots Analytics, which is a literal data broker.
Note on privacy policies: Campaign Registry, the org carriers partner with to minimize local area code spam, requires privacy policies, but they are never checked.

4 Likes