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January 23rd, 2009 at 9:25 am
Commercial Domestic Surveillance: The new White House Website, YouTube & Privacy
in: privacy, broadband, Google, Web 2.0 & Democracy, behavioral targeting watch, online video, YouTube, Obama Administration
In a post for CNET yesterday, privacy expert Chris Soghoian revealed that President Obamas White House has quietly exempted YouTube from strict rules relating to the use of cookies on federal agency Web sites. Federal rules prohibit the use of what are called persistent cookies, that can track an online users activities and behavior. Soghoian cites the new White House privacy policy that states, A waiver has been issued by the White House Counsels office to allow for the use of this persistent cookie. Googles YouTube received this exemption, notes the White House site, to help maintain the integrity of video statistics.
Now the White House has made a quick change, according to a post written today by Soghoian. Obamas web team rolled out a technical fix that severely limits YouTubes ability to track most visitors to the White House website, he writes. By late Thursday evening, each embedded YouTube video had been replaced with an image of a video player, which a user must click on before the real YouTube player will be loaded. The result of this change is that YouTube is now only able to use cookies to track users who click on the play button on an embedded YouTube video the majority of people who scroll through a page without clicking play will not be tracked. But he also describes the new approach as a band-aid. Those users who do click the play button will be secretly tracked as they navigate the White House website and if those users have visited YouTube or any other Google run website in the past, the fact that they watched an Obama video will be added to the existing massive pile of data the company has compiled on each web surfer.....
They seem to want to do something to fix this problem, but all they are doing is making you click an extra thing before they track you.
Yeah, it shouldn't be the exception. It should be the rule.They seem to want to do something to fix this problem, but all they are doing is making you click an extra thing before they track you.
and why grant the exception? I understand about 'advertising', but why would the administration grant the exception?
I operate under the assumption that my every move and keystroke online can be traced.
I highly advise the rest of you to assume likewise.
I also use Cookie Monster II and Free Internet File Eraser.
I trust no government weenie to always do the right thing.
Now, I'm probably on another watch list.
