Posted on 08/16/2009 11:13:19 AM PDT by tunedin
WASHINGTON – The Barack Obama administration has announced plans to lift a government ban on tracking visitors to government websites, and potentially, collect their personal data through the use of "cookies" – an effort some suspect may already be in place on White House sites.
A ban on such tracking by the federal government on Internet users has been in place since 2000, however, the White House Office of Management and Budget now wants to lift the ban citing a "compelling need."
In fact, according to the Electronic Privacy and Information Center, federal agencies have already negotiated agreements and contracts with social networking sites like Google, YouTube, SlideShare, Facebook, AddThis, Blist, Flickr and VIMEO to collect information on visitors for federal web sites. All of these private companies are known to have agreements with federal agencies, but the public has never seen them.
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
I may be mistaken but didn’t someone do this same thing in Germany during WWII? Didn’t someone in the USSR to the same thing?
What is their compelling need other than a near orgasmic need to be a ‘big brother’ watching over the sheeple.
When did all those crickets move in down at the aCLU?
It was only the evil Cheney-Bush regime that tried to spy on Americans!
Just disable cookies on your browser.
And liberals won’t care because it’s not Bushitler who’s doing this.
they had an internet then?
No....but the process was the same.
Well..., even on this site, we’ve got “Google Analytics” going, too... LOL...
I can block it, if I want to, but I leave it alone...
Google Analytics
http://www.google.com/analytics/
“...Today, for instance, visitors who view the president’s weekly address at whitehouse.gov automatically receive a small file from Google that quietly tracks their online activities until 2011.
Perhaps this date will loom as the new 1984.”
Wrote Daniel R. Ballon Ph.D
Senior Policy Fellow, Technology StudiesEmail
Pacific Research Institute
Letter to the Editor, The Boston Globe, February 17, 2009
< script src=”http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js"; type=”text/javascript” >< /script >
< script type=”text/javascript” >_uacct = “UA-2288668-1”; urchinTracker();< /script >
It’s not impossible to get away from “tracking” on the Internet, but it does take some effort and some people figure it’s not worth it to bother one way or another. It would be like worrying that someone was going to take a picture of you out in public or something... so you always walk around in a “burka” or something... LOL...
The “InPrivate” function of IE 8 seems rather appealing now.
“...Today, for instance, visitors who view the president’s weekly address at whitehouse.gov automatically receive a small file from Google that quietly tracks their online activities until 2011.
Perhaps this date will loom as the new 1984.”
Wrote Daniel R. Ballon Ph.D
Senior Policy Fellow, Technology StudiesEmail
Pacific Research Institute
Letter to the Editor, The Boston Globe, February 17, 2009
“Just disable cookies on your browser.”
That is reasonable advice for most websites.
And if one has a user account on a site such as FR or shops, such as at Amazon, you have to have cookies.
But increasingly you see messages requiring cookies for sites that have NO need for accounts or shopping carts:
“To use this site, cookies must be enabled. “
And give you wonderful rationale why you need them:
“Overall, cookies help us give you a better Web site to use, by letting us monitor what’s working and what isn’t through site traffic analysis.”
Those sites I now avoid. If the government required cookies to access sites, I’d avoid those sites, too.
Firefox addons such as noscript and adblock plus are good to use.
Just learned of this crap myself last week when I read the article. Installed Better Privacy and CCleaner but I'm sure the b***ards will find another way to track us when those tools become widely known and used.
Just disable cookies on your browser.
that precludes being able to view some or even all of some websites.......just as an aside I zapped all of my cookies and clicked a link for a post here for a website we see frequently as source for videos (freedomslighthouse).....instantly I got 11 cookies!
Anyone have any idea what the file is or where one would find such a file on computer—I am assuming he is referring to something much less obvious than cookies....
Been wondering the same thing.
True, but depending on the browser type, such as Firefox you can adjust privacy settings to reject “third party cookies”.
That limits your cookies to FR if that is your goal.
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