Transparency should empower citizens to expose the inner workings of government, not empower the government to spy on its citizens. Several widely-used Internet technologies allow companies to track users as they surf the Web for the purpose of serving personalized, relevant advertisements. Even though many online services and applications may appear "free," users actually support these services by permitting providers to collect, store, and monetize their personal information.
On government sites, the OMB determined in 2003 that tracking and profiling visitors could endanger civil liberties, and strictly limited these practices. The government remains interested in data-mining information about citizens' online activities. In 2005, for instance, the Department of Justice served Google with a subpoena for "all queries that have been entered on your company's search engine" during a specified period of time. The company fought this subpoena, however, a number of telecommunications companies granted the government unprecedented access to traffic on their networks.
As the administration integrates private technologies, such as YouTube videos, into transparency Web sites, companies are using this opportunity to place tracking files onto visitors' computers. No taxpayer should be forced to submit to any form of tracking, merely for visiting a government site and accessing public information. Any files placed on a user's computer must expire at the end of a session, and should not be permitted to indefinitely track which sites that user visits on the Internet.
Comments (4)
Government agencies have access for personal information. It's can cause problems because some staff is unprofessional and made many mistakes in database.
As a federal web manager it is important for me to know that the information I am providing on my website is being used by my site visitors. This also helps me determine how best to make investments in improving the content to provide easier access to my customers. I take my customers right to privacy very seriously and do not collect anything that would personally identify who my site visitor is.
When you embed third party technologies into your site (such as YouTube videos), you lose control over what information is collected about your visitors. As soon as you click on the embedded video, Google places a tracking cookie on your computer that can be used to personally identify you through your IP address. The point is that customers will be required to submit to this type of tracking merely for visiting a public site to access public information.
Response to Just a Web Manager: Rather than tracking your visitors by embedding third party technologies (whatever your reasons for doing somay be), you could survey them. Yes, it's less accurate and less efficient, but by doing so you are giving the user the option to participate or not instead of tracking them without giving them that option.