Sonia Arrison

Government agencies breaking privacy rules…again

Declan McCullagh and Anne Broache at CNET today report on federal agencies tracking web visitors against the rules. It’s not surprising, but it is disturbing. If government wants to increase surveillance in America and argues that we should trust them to follow the rules, then this example puts a huge dent in their argument. If a company made a similar mistake, they’d be facing a fine, but what will happen to the bureaucrats who ignore their public duties?

This is cross posted from Sonia Arrison’s blog.

January 5, 2006 | Comments |

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    I dunno, cookies are pretty innocuous, and I'm not sure one what basis a private business would be fined for using cookies on its web site. Certainly, if there's a federal law restricting how federal agencies use cookies, they should obey it, but this was more likely an honest mistake by the agencies' webmasters than some kind of sinister plan to spy on their customers.

    After all, all you can really tell from a cookie is who's visited your own website. (or in cases of cookies run by third parties, other sites using the same cookie) It's hard to see what nefarious use could be made of, say, a list of all the times I've visited the Treasury Department's web site.
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    if there's a federal law restricting how federal agencies use cookies, they should obey it, but this was more likely an honest mistake by the agencies' webmasters than some kind of sinister plan to spy on their customers
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