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Google Stands To Gain From Capital Connections
Privacy Groups And Small Web Companies Are Raising Concerns About The Company's Ubiquity On Government Sitesby Neil MunroExecutives at online-advertising giant Google are helping President Obama and Capitol Hill legislators get their messages out to the public, but they're facing nascent opposition from privacy advocates and small competitors who say Google is inappropriately using its presence on government Web sites to track users' political activities online. These critics say that Google, aided by the White House, is using "cookie" software and the popular goal of government transparency to boost its own revenues and to build a vast database of citizens' political attitudes. Google's expanding role in government is illustrated by the deals that Google struck with the Democratic-controlled Congress and with President Obama's White House. Both allow Google's data-collecting cookies -- compact files automatically downloaded onto Web-surfers' computers when they visit a site -- to be placed on citizens' computers when they view politicians' video speeches, or even when they merely view the pages where the speeches can be watched. In a short statement to National Journal, a White House spokesman said "we aren't using [Internet] data for political purposes, nor do we have any plans to." But it is clear that the administration's use of cookies blurs traditional distinctions between government and corporate information, and between public outreach and political campaigning. It's also clear that the White House's use of cookies is very different from the administrations of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, both of whom minimized tracking of citizens' online activities by sharply limiting the use of federal and corporate cookies. The current system "allows one company to collect huge amounts of data.... The idea that the government would be endorsing any corporation having access to citizens' political concerns... is a concern," said Jeff Chester, founder of the D.C.-based Center for Digital Democracy. The data collected from government Web sites, he said, "can then feed into the very sophisticated political campaign-ads products that Google is peddling to legislators all across the country." Even without any role for Google, the government's use of data-collecting cookie software on its Web sites and those of its affiliates is questionable, said David Sohn, a privacy-advocate at the left-leaning Center for Democracy & Technology. "It's something we're going to be looking at... there will be, and there should be, scrutiny." From their first day in office, White House officials used Google's YouTube software to display videos of Obama's speeches on WhiteHouse.gov. Because of this choice, some pages on the site inserted Google's cookies onto visitors' computers, even if the visitor did not watch the YouTube videos. After a spurt of protests from privacy advocates, White House officials and Google officials modified the system so that YouTube cookies were inserted only if visitors watched the videos, said Christopher Soghoian, a computer expert at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, who discovered the YouTube cookies on the White House Web site. Next, the White House began using commercial software made by Akamai to display the videos. But this service is expensive, and it too inserted cookies into each browser that displayed the Web page, even when the visitor did not watch the video. By March 10, White House officials stopped the transfer of those cookies and restarted use of YouTube software -- and YouTube cookies -- after National Journal asked for details about the White House's policies. Balance at the link. Few surprises here. "We Are Keeping Score" Obama Posted by: Besoeker 2009-04-06 |
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