Re: PRIVACY ISSUE WITH the new White House web site? CORRECTION

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Karl Auerbach <karl () cavebear com>
Date: January 21, 2009 2:33:02 PM EST
To: Steven Champeon <schampeo () hesketh com>
Cc: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: Re: [IP] PRIVACY ISSUE WITH   the new White House web site?	 
CORRECTION

Steven Champeon wrote:
... but if
> you're curious about the gory details being leaked, it's all in the
> Javascript file used to create the string:

Thanks for those details; I was trying to read their javascript and  
make sense of what it was doing.

I agree with you that a lot of the data being generated is useful to  
doing good screen rendering - but, since that is a transient matter  
between the web server generating the content and the user's web  
browser, I'd ask why that data needs to be sent to a third party?

The core of my concern is that every time a citizen looks at his  
President's web site, a record of that visit is left in the hands of a  
third party.

And if there are any other webtrendslive.com cookies that are placed  
there via other webites, those too will be delivered to  
webtrendslive.com when the whitehouse is visited.

So imagine that I have visited puppyfumping.org and caught a  
webtrendslive cookie from that site, that cookie will be delivered to  
webtrendslive when I visit the whitehouse, thus giving them knowledge  
that I (not necessarily the personally identifiable "I") have some  
interest in puppy fumping and the whitehouse.  (I use "puppy fumping"  
when I need a phrase that sounds terrible but is in actuality,  
meaningless and innocuous.)

Given the wide presence of things like webtrendslive, this kind of  
linkage can grow and grow - and it takes only one extra bit of data  
from some source to transform it into a personally identifiable  
dossier of the web practices of those who visit the white house website.

Brad Templeton has suggested that because nothing is ever erased that  
once we get face recognition software that really works that all of  
those old photographs on Facebook, high school yearbooks, street  
cameras, private security cameras and the like can be retroactively  
scanned to create a video history of each person.

Similarly, the growth of web linkages, as facilitated by this  
whitehouse.gov web-bug, create a body of data that takes but a bit  
more to turn into a thing that deeply penetrates a web user's privacy.

One could even go so far as to suggest that the presence of the web  
bug could "chill" citizen's use of governmental web sites to obtain  
government services:  I can imagine that something like match.com  
would like to know that a give web access has also been making queries  
to governmental sites about AIDS.

                --karl--




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