I didn't expect the Obama administration to become more invasive than BushCo, but according to the ACLU, that's just what is happening. This should be big news to the highly wired Kos community. The ACLU:
submitted comments today to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) opposing its recent proposal to reverse current federal policy and allow the use of web tracking technologies, like cookies, on federal government websites. Cookies can be used to track an Internet user’s every click and are often linked across multiple websites; they frequently identify particular people.
Since 2000, it has been the policy of the federal government not to use such technology. But the OMB is now seeking to change that policy and is considering the use of cookies for tracking web visitors across multiple sessions and storing their unique preferences and surfing habits. Though this is a major shift in policy, the announcement of this program consists of only a single page from the federal register that contains almost no detail.
My graduate work was in expert systems and I spent a few years developing expert systems for the government. I can well imagine how data like this could be used to track you down and stop you from doing whatever it is that you had planned to do. A good thing if you were planning on grievous harm to innocent people. Not so good if you were planning a protest, making a government official personally uncomfortable, or were just not a friend of the current government. Even if the Obamas are going to send you an invitation to Thanksgiving dinner, this should worry you. Time passes and administrations change.
What might you be looking for on a government site that could be used against you? Here's a little list composed in 3 minutes of paranoid googling:
This is a major change in the sort of detailed, personal information that the government can keep on you, being slipped in while those of us not on vacation are focused on health care and other issues. I'm sending the ACLU a check to thank them for watching our backs. What about you?
[update: here's the White House statement on how they propose using web tracking devices like cookies and the request for comments. Yes, it sounds innocent. But you can use a camera to record a birthday party or to start a blackmail scheme.]