Leigh www.leighm.net
Have you seen my newsfeeds?: http://leighmdotnet.blogspot.com/ Got RSS?: http://www.furl.net/members/leighm/rss.xml
----- Original Message ----- From: <politech-request at politechbot.com> To: <politech at politechbot.com> Sent: Friday, January 06, 2006 10:31 AM Subject: Politech Digest, Vol 29, Issue 3
Send Politech mailing list submissions to politech at politechbot.com
To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://politechbot.com/mailman/listinfo/politech or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to politech-request at politechbot.com
You can reach the person managing the list at politech-owner at politechbot.com
When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Politech digest..."
_______________________________________________
POLITECH DIGEST
Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/) Digest subscription information is at the end. _______________________________________________________________
Today's Topics:
1. Dozens of federal agencies track Web visitors illegally
[priv] (Declan McCullagh)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1 Date: Thu, 05 Jan 2006 09:33:47 -0800 From: Declan McCullagh <declan at well.com> Subject: [Politech] Dozens of federal agencies track Web visitors illegally [priv] To: politech at politechbot.com Message-ID: <43BD587B.9020504 at well.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-6018702.html
Government Web sites follow visitors' movements January 5, 2006, 4:00 AM PST
Dozens of federal agencies are tracking visits to U.S. government Web sites in violation of long-standing rules designed to protect online privacy, a CNET News.com investigation shows.
From the Air Force to the Treasury Department, government agencies are using either "Web bugs" or permanent cookies to monitor their visitors' behavior, even though federal law restricts the practice. Chart: Federal Web tracking
Some departments changed their practices this week after being contacted by CNET News.com. The Pentagon said it wasn't aware that its popular Defenselink.mil portal tracked visitors--in violation of a privacy notice--and said it would fix the problem. So did the Defense Threat Reduction Agency and the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board.
"We were not aware of the cookies set to expire in 2016," a Pentagon representative said Wednesday. "All of the cookies we had set with WebTrends were to be strictly (temporary) cookies, and we are taking immediate action." WebTrends is a commercial Web-monitoring service.
[...remainder snipped...]
---
Some examples:
Agency Name Cookie Type Expires Hostname --------------------------------------------------------- Air Force Webtrends.com 2016 af.mil Commerce Department Statcounter.com 2011 ogc.doc.gov Defense Department Webtrends.com 2016 defenselink.mil Election Assist. Comm. Own 2007 eac.gov Energy Department Statcounter.com 2011 www.er.doe.gov General Services Admin. Own 2035 apps.fss.gsa.gov Office of Personnel Mgmt Own 2037 leadership.opm.gov Treasury Department Own 2035 ots.treas.gov
------------------------------
_______________________________________________________________
Politech is the oldest and most popular mailing list devoted to politics and technology. It is moderated by Declan McCullagh, and list archives and information on how to subscribe or unsubscribe can be found at: http://www.politechbot.com/
Politech is available in both a daily digest and in the traditional individual-message format.
You may redistribute this digest freely if you include this notice. _______________________________________________________________
End of Politech Digest, Vol 29, Issue 3 ***************************************