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By Cara Garretson
The federal government is defending its proposal to use persistent cookies on its Web sites, an initiative that has been met with criticism and concerns over privacy.
The proposal, outlined in a june post on the White House blog, was written by Michael Fitzpatrick, associate administrator of the OMB Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, and Vivek Kundra, Federal CIO. The government, it explained, wants to revisit the current ban on using persistent cookies on federal Web sites, allowing the sites to benefit from greater user interaction and better serve online visitors.
Persistent cookies allow Web sites to store certain data about visitors so the site can "remember" things about them, such as tracking preferences and storing chosen items in shopping carts.
In the June blog post, the White House said it was reexamining the policy as part of its Open Government Initiative, citing a significant shift in Internet technology since the policy was put in place in 2000. A two-week public comment period on the topic ended Monday.
Among the critics of the government's proposal is the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which says the change would pose serious threats to U.S. citizens' personal information. Persistent cookies often identify particular people, the ACLU says. Using them represents "a major shift in policy," according to the group's comments.
"Without explaining this reversal of policy, the OMB is seeking to allow the mass collection of personal information of every user of a federal government website," said Michael Macleod-Ball, acting director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. "Until the OMB answers the multitude of questions surrounding this policy shift, we will continue to raise our strenuous objections."
On Wednesday, Kundra and Fitzpatrick restated the government's goal in bringing persistent cookies to federal Web sites. "Our main goal in revisiting the ban on using persistent cookies on federal Web sites is to bring the federal government into the 21st century," they wrote. "Consistent with this administration's commitment to making government more open and participatory, we want federal agencies to be able to provide the same user-friendly, dynamic, and citizen-centric Web sites that people have grown accustomed to using when they shop or get news online or communicate through social media networks, while also protecting people's privacy. "
Kundra and Fitzpatrick also stressed that the cookie policy has not yet changed. They also addressed what it called a "potential misperception" that some published articles have alluded to —that the government would exempt certain third parties from existing privacy rules, resulting in the compromise of individual privacy.
"This is not true," they said. "The current policy in place on persistent cookies continues to apply to all federal agencies and to those agencies' use of third-party applications, whenever personal information is collected on the agency's behalf."
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