A White House decision permitted the use of persistent Internet cookies in YouTube video files embedded on the redesigned WhiteHouse.gov Web site. Letting third-party cookies be placed on the site is a deviation from established executive-branch policy that leaves site visitors open to being tracked and profiled without their knowledge.
The White House is watching you.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) questioned a waiver that was issued by White House counsel concerning the use of cookies on the WhiteHouse.gov site. The waiver, which is now part of the site's modified privacy policy allows the use of persistent cookies by "some third-party providers to help maintain the integrity of video statistics."
Privacy advocates said visitors to federal Web sites should be able to view official information without fear of being tracked either by the government or by third parties such as YouTube, which is owned by Google Inc. That expectation is consistent with the government's own stance on the use of cookies, according to a memorandum issued in June 2000 by the White House Office of Management and Budget.
Obama's campaign promise was to run a transparent government but it has not in this regard.
Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Washington-based Center for Digital Democracy, also said that the decision to allow the use of persistent cookies in embedded videos is worrisome.
Tools such as YouTube's Insight software could be used to conduct in-depth analysis of the data collected from WhiteHouse.gov visitors, Chester said. And it isn't just third parties that could potentially use the tracking data, according to Chester.
Such information could "give the Obama White House a tremendous amount of insight into public behaviors," he said. "Do we really want the government to sanction the use of a consumer-profiling application that links our commercial behaviors with our civic behavior?"
How the White House responds to the concerns bears watching, Chester added. "This will be a litmus test on how to balance the interest in using new-media tools with privacy concerns," he said.
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