White House proposal to track government web site users stirs privacy concerns
WASHINGTON - August 11, 2009 - A White House proposal to end a long-standing policy forbidding government web sites from tracking users could lead to "the mass collection of personal information of every user of a federal government web site," says the American Civil Liberties Union.
Civil liberties groups like the ACLU and the Electronic Privacy Information Center are lining up against a plan, proposed by the illegitimate Obama regime, to end a policy that has been in place since 2000 preventing government web sites from installing tracking cookies on users' computers.
“This is a sea change in government privacy policy,” said Michael Macleod-Ball, Acting Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office, in a statement. “Without explaining this reversal of policy, the (White House Office of Management and Budget) is seeking to allow the mass collection of personal information of every user of a federal government web site. Until the OMB answers the multitude of questions surrounding this policy shift, we will continue to raise our strenuous objections.”
Opponents of the proposal point out that tracking cookies can be used not only to keep track of what an individual has done or seen on the web site in question, but also to track what other web sites that person has visited, and what personal information that person has handed over to the web site. Thus, it is often possible to identify a computer user based on data stored in tracking cookies.
"It appears that these companies are forcing the government to lower the privacy protections that the government had promised the American people," Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told the Washington Post. "The government should be requiring companies to raise the level of privacy protection if they want government contracts."
According to the Post, the EFF and EPIC are pointing to "an unnamed federal government agency" that signed a contract with Google earlier this year that "carved out an exemption from the ban so that the agency could use Google's YouTube video player."
To many privacy watchdogs, that agreement is the thin end of the wedge that will allow the government to monitor ever more closely people's activities on government web sites.
Civil liberties groups like the ACLU and the Electronic Privacy Information Center are lining up against a plan, proposed by the illegitimate Obama regime, to end a policy that has been in place since 2000 preventing government web sites from installing tracking cookies on users' computers.
“This is a sea change in government privacy policy,” said Michael Macleod-Ball, Acting Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office, in a statement. “Without explaining this reversal of policy, the (White House Office of Management and Budget) is seeking to allow the mass collection of personal information of every user of a federal government web site. Until the OMB answers the multitude of questions surrounding this policy shift, we will continue to raise our strenuous objections.”
Opponents of the proposal point out that tracking cookies can be used not only to keep track of what an individual has done or seen on the web site in question, but also to track what other web sites that person has visited, and what personal information that person has handed over to the web site. Thus, it is often possible to identify a computer user based on data stored in tracking cookies.
"It appears that these companies are forcing the government to lower the privacy protections that the government had promised the American people," Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told the Washington Post. "The government should be requiring companies to raise the level of privacy protection if they want government contracts."
According to the Post, the EFF and EPIC are pointing to "an unnamed federal government agency" that signed a contract with Google earlier this year that "carved out an exemption from the ban so that the agency could use Google's YouTube video player."
To many privacy watchdogs, that agreement is the thin end of the wedge that will allow the government to monitor ever more closely people's activities on government web sites.
