A cookie can only be accessed by the website that placed it on your computer. I am a professioanl web developer, I know how cookies work. Department of Defense Directive 5240.1 authorizes DoD agenceys to track website useage information. Also, there is no law - only executive orders - that prevent NSA from monitoring citizens of the United States.
This is obviously an attempt by the reporter to blow things out of proportion. The article is quite misleading to the non tech-savvy reader. A cookie sent to your computer by a website can be access only by that website. The cookie can only contain information from that website. Meaning that this limits NSA's ability to track you to which pages you have visited on THEIR site. Now, I understand how some people feel that even this is a violation of their privacy, but when my brother read the article, he got the impression that by the use of these cookies, NSA was able to track where he went online, not just on the NSA site.
Slashdot Mirror
A cookie can only be accessed by the website that placed it on your computer. I am a professioanl web developer, I know how cookies work. Department of Defense Directive 5240.1 authorizes DoD agenceys to track website useage information. Also, there is no law - only executive orders - that prevent NSA from monitoring citizens of the United States.
This is obviously an attempt by the reporter to blow things out of proportion. The article is quite misleading to the non tech-savvy reader. A cookie sent to your computer by a website can be access only by that website. The cookie can only contain information from that website. Meaning that this limits NSA's ability to track you to which pages you have visited on THEIR site. Now, I understand how some people feel that even this is a violation of their privacy, but when my brother read the article, he got the impression that by the use of these cookies, NSA was able to track where he went online, not just on the NSA site.