[Businessmtg] Anonymity and archives

[Mary Abbott]



I’m opposed to keeping archives shares. 

The concept of anonymity is repeatedly emphasized in every aspect of Al-Anon. Those archives break the anonymity of people who shared back in 2009 and every other year since. Most of those people who shared are no longer around to give their permission to have their shares used for any purpose or to be contacted for any reason. But we share their contact information when we archive their shares. Even if someone who shared in 2010 decided that they no longer wanted their shares in the archive, they would be told that their shares cannot be deleted. That doesn’t sound like Al-Anon anonymity, nor Al-Anon principles to me when we tell someone that their Al-Anon anonymity cannot be protected because it is huge data dump of shares for which keep are all of them or none of them. 

If I want to save a share, I can save it on my email server. If my email server is not compatible to read or save ASP shares, I can opt to use an email server that does, if I want to be a member of ASP. 

If someone has a problem with a share’s content and takes that concern to the list administrator, the administrator can get a copy of the share from the person who felt the share was inappropriate. Keeping shares archived is not required for the list administrator to review a potentially inappropriate share. 

ESH shared at meeting is not CAL. Keeping meetings archived so that members can go look up a topic does not seem appropriate to me. We have members who share more mess than message. That is their right to do so but it is not the model we want to promote to newcomers or anyone else for that matter who are looking for help them with their recovery. That is what CAL is for. The importance of using CAL as the model for recovery is repeatedly mentioned throughout Al-Anon literature. CAL keeps the focus us, not the mess that surrounds us and CAL is a community endeavor that keeps the authors’ identity private. Share are an important part of recovery to but they are not meant to be a permanent record to be used like CAL  

Finally (yes, my final point), I love data and the data shared with us is unidentified collapsed data. But the list administrator does not have specific written permission from anyone on whom these individual data are collected. My profession was collecting data. I was not in the healthcare field but I was still bound to abide by US HIPPA regulations for everyone just in case there were any individuals whose health care issues might even remotely tangentially be associated with our studies. And there always were. We have people regularly share about seeing mental healthcare professionals. That is healthcare information. On the Al-Anon WSO website, in regards to their chat rooms, it is no coincidence that anonymity and safeguards to insure HIPPA compliance occur in the same paragraph. No permanent record is allowed of chats that take place on the WSO website. Collecting and keeping identifiable information that contains any kind of health care information without specific written permission can be construed to be a HIPPA violation. It doesn’t matter if it is collapsed data having nothing to do with content of the share. It is principle of violating anonymity that is the basis for US HIPPA regulations and Al-Anon recovery. 

Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of our Al-Anon recovery. Our archives violate the spirit and directive of that tradition. 

Thanks for reading this long share. 

Mary A. 





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