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White House Exempts YouTube From Web Privacy Rules

Posted by timothy on from the but-other-than-this-one-thing dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The new White House website privacy policy promises that the site will not use long-term tracking cookies, complying with a decade old rule prohibiting such user tracking by federal agencies. However, Obama's legal team has quietly exempted YouTube from this rule. Visitors to the official White House blog will receive long-term tracking cookies whenever they surf to a web-page with an embedded YouTube video — even those users that do not click the "play" button. As CNET reports, no other company has been singled out and rewarded with such a waiver."

12 of 235 comments (clear)

  1. They can't control external websites by DotNM · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... unless they legislate them to remove those cookies. What alternatives to YouTube could they use?

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    1. Re:They can't control external websites by Rinisari · · Score: 5, Insightful

      They could host the videos themselves, use another site that doesn't use cookies, or use an alternative version of YouTube's creation that would not use cookies.

      There are lots of options, this is simply the easiest.

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      Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
    2. Re:They can't control external websites by Anonymusing · · Score: 5, Insightful

      They could host the videos themselves

      But why invest in all that bandwidth and hosting when there's a free, available, willing, and WILDLY POPULAR alternative already here? C'mon. If they hosted it themselves, they would RFP it out to the lowest bidder, futz around with technology issues for awhile (does the BBC iPlayer ring a bell?), before finally delivering a subpar product that frustrates everyone. I would MUCH rather they used YouTube for their videos, and spent their time and money on things that matter.

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    3. Re:They can't control external websites by kabocox · · Score: 5, Insightful

      They could host the videos themselves, use another site that doesn't use cookies, or use an alternative version of YouTube's creation that would not use cookies.
      There are lots of options, this is simply the easiest.

      Well, it would cost money for them to replicate YouTube just for government stuff. It's much easier just to use the "free" YouTube service for that. Now if the free service has tracking cookies, well either you decide it wasn't that big of a deal in the first place or stop posting videos. Since everyone seems to really like the videos, and most folks ignore or delete cookies that they don't like; they've decided to live with it.

      That's like complaining that google, slashdot, or wikipedia gave you cookies. I mean come on if you use the internet, you'll get cooties, um cookies.

  2. The U.S. government should have its own servers. by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The U.S. government should have its own video servers, or lease them from YouTube, and not depend on commercial sites. Commercial sites can do anything they want any time they want; they don't have to consider internal government policy.

  3. OH NOES! PANIC! by Reality+Master+201 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    THIS IS THE MOST SIGNIFICANT NEWS ITEM OF THE DAY AND UNDERMINES OUR DEMOCRACY!

    Obama is evil because his staff allowed You Tube to set a cookie. There's a conspiracy. They've gotten to him, he's in the bag for them. I bet he got use of the orbital mind control lasers in exchange for this.

    Jesus christ, what the fuck? YouTube gets to set a cookie on the page. Is that really a huge deal? Now they know you watched the Inauguration video from the White House website! Oh noes!

  4. So um by Smidge204 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A third party host - YouTube - is allowed to keep tracking cookies. The federal regulation on tracking cookies applies only to federal websites, so that's not really a problem.

    People seem suspicious that only YouTube was granted this exemption, but... are there any other third-party hosts that have things embedded in the whitehouse.gov website? If not, I still don't understand the problem here. YouTube is doing the tracking, not the feds. If the concern is over the ability of the feds to get that tracking data, then there are so many other ways they could do that it's not even worth getting butthurt over.

    Sounds like this guy is just picking a nit.
    =Smidge=

  5. Re:Who cares? by supernova_hq · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Quick, everyone connect to Iraqi proxy servers for a week, then go back to your regular domain.

  6. Re:This is disturbing... by theaveng · · Score: 5, Insightful

    >>>So why do they need a special exemption?

    They don't. The slashdot summary is incorrect. As you stated, the video is not formally part of whitehouse.gov, but an external link to youtube.com and therefore the rules of youtube.com apply. It's perfectly logical.

     

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  7. Re:This is disturbing... by Garganus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Huh... the way you phrase it, it doesn't sound news-worthy.

  8. Re:This is disturbing... by AvitarX · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No, what I would expect is whitehouse.gov to not use youtube, instead of re-writing policy to allow Google to better track visitors to the whitehouse.gov site.

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  9. Re:This is disturbing... by LunarCrisis · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Well, that's probably why his version didn't make the summary.

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