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Feds Seek Input On Cookie Policy For Government Web Sites

Posted by Soulskill on from the om-nom-nom dept.

suraj.sun sends along this quote from Information Week: "The government wants to use cookies to offer more personalized web sites to citizens and better analytics to Webmasters. ... The federal government has drafted changes to its outdated restrictions on HTTP cookies, and wants the public's input. Under the plan, detailed in a blog post by federal CIO Vivek Kundra and... Michael Fitzpatrick, federal agencies would be able to use cookies as long as their use is lawful, citizens can opt out of being tracked, notice of the use of cookies is posted on the Web site, and Web sites don't limit access to information for those who opt out. ... The Office of Management and Budget is considering three separate tiers of cookie usage that will likely have different restrictions for each, based on privacy risks. The first tier of sites would use single-session technologies, the second multi-session technologies for use in analytics only, and the third for multi-session cookies that are used to remember data or settings 'beyond what is needed for web analytics.'"

4 of 74 comments (clear)

  1. Re:How about no? by sakdoctor · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Cookies expire at end of session according to my preference.
    That's fine for session management, but when sites start storing preferences, I get reset to the bone-headed defaults every time.
    Then I leave and never return.

  2. Re:I think this is great by hedwards · · Score: 1, Interesting

    There's a significant distinction to be made there. First off, these agencies aren't the NSA and secondly it is currently perfectly legal to use cookies. The two aren't really connect at all.

    There is a significant amount of justified mistrust in the government right now, but the thing is that if they were up to something nefarious, I'd assume they'd use a method that was much less easily dodged by people

  3. Suggestions by asdfndsagse · · Score: 2, Interesting

    1. Tracking MUST be in aggregate. Any categories of users SHOULD come only from self descriptions fcrom the user. (ie clicking "i run a small business")
    a
    2. Preferences MUST be stored client-side in cookies, not server-side. Sites MAY use hashing to prevent tampering where appropriate. Preferences SHOULD be stored as plain text so that they can be read and perhaps changed directly by the user.

    3. Users SHOULD NOT have unique ids tagged to them, and MUST not have unique id's tagged to them over more than one session without an opt-in.

    4. Analytics of users/preferences and locations/IP addresses MUST be done in a way as to minimize the ability to specificly track people who do not opt-in and are unaware of tracking.

  4. Fed only wants your 'input' as propaganda! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The feds are not really interested in realistic input from the public. If they were, they would not require that commenters 'log in'. The cookies are being sought in order to deny the public the option of logging in...or not, simply by placing persistent 'tracking cookies' and other types of malwaaare. I checked their website cited above in the submission and you will find that indeed it does require 'logging in'. As such, only the converted choir will comment, and all these comments will be 'filtered for content' before being displayed. Such 'filtering' will be such that only sycophantic comments will be given prominent display. Comments opposing the cookies will only be displayed if they are ignorantly worded, ungrammatically constructed, and otherwise show the writers in a bad light. In this way the site can be manipulated as such that other propagandists can claim 'popular support' for internal spying. That the whole website has a flavor of Joseph Goebbels's old 'debates' when Hitler was an agitator in Great Depression Germany is lost on a younger generation that not only has no memory of National Socialism, but also has no education of it either. Modern history courses in high schools leave that out and only teach history after world war two, concentrating on multiculturalism while ignoring the culture that built the nation and the schools in it that now teach only fluff, a whole other subject worthy of its own debates.
                        These cookies are easily removed now, so it seems silly that the guv would take great pains to foist them on you unless they know something that we do not. Is there something new and horrible in Windows 7? Something that will give us even LESS control of our machines that we paid for with our money and get less and less use, choice, and especially control of?