If sport’s volunteers, (coaches, administrators, governors and other innumerable helpers) were told that a condition of their service was to agree to the sale of their personal information to an entity collecting it on behalf of their sport’s governing body, it is quite likely that many would decide not to offer their service. Yet, it appears that condition is a reality of participating as a volunteer in community sport today.
Hidden in the small print of one online registration application (registered offshore), for one of New Zealand’s largest community sports are the following words, “in the event of a sale, merger, consolidation, reorganisation, financing, change of control, acquisition or liquidation, we may transfer, sell or assign to third parties information concerning your relationship with us, including, without limitation, Personal Information that you provide and other information concerning your relationship with us".
The idea that the “Personal Information” (i.e., information that is defined by this service as "personally identifiable information") of sport volunteers has become a saleable commodity should raise concern across New Zealand’s sporting landscape. Sport’s volunteers should not have to agree for their name, residential and postal address, email address, telephone number and date of birth; marital status, occupation, interests and other biographical information to become part of a potential commercial sale by a technology platform that collects this information on behalf of a governing body, as a perquisite for their voluntary service to be provided.
The dismissive argument that such agreements are “commonplace” (e.g., when “signing up” for social media or subscription products), is an example of “false equivalence”, for a very straightforward reason.
Whereas a person who chooses to enter into a transaction to receive a service must willingly agree to the terms of the service provider, a sport volunteer is the service provider; that is, there is no justification for an online registration provider (which collects personal information) to mandate terms which would otherwise suggest it must be recompensed in some way by the volunteer, for the volunteer’s offer of service.
Under New Zealand’s Privacy Act principles, Principle 10 states that, “you can generally only use personal information for the purpose you collected it. You may use it in ways that are directly related to the original purpose, or you may use it another way if the person gives you permission.”
Hiding that "permission" in the small print, and making it a condition of being able to be a sport volunteer, not only debases the concept of volunteers contributing for no personal reward, it also indicates a casual disrespect to everyone who agrees to help out, “for the love of the game”.