Gotta get down to the (data) mine...

This morning's New York Times (free registration required) explains that the ACLU is doing a little data mining to try to improve its fund-raising success.

Some board members, correctly pointing out that this is just the sort of behavior the ACLU slags private industry for, aren't happy:

"It is part of the A.C.L.U.'s mandate, part of its mission, to protect consumer privacy," said Wendy Kaminer, a writer and A.C.L.U. board member. "It goes against A.C.L.U. values to engage in data-mining on people without informing them. It's not illegal, but it is a violation of our values. It is hypocrisy."

Now New York's publicity-loving Attorney General, Eliot Spitzer (safety tip: try never to be positioned between Mr. Spitzer and a camera) is getting into the act, questioning whether the ACLU has violated their own stated privacy policies.

As a card-carrying member of the ACLU, I must admit to being a little disappointed with the organization's new data-gathering practices. When it comes to organizations using computing power to correlate publically available data, however, I'm afraid that has just become common practice, and as a practical matter the ship sailed years ago.

(See The End of Privacy, The Transparent Society, among others.)