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More Cookies In Washington: Off To The White House
John Stith
Staff Writer
2005-12-30
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It would seem the National Security Agency (NSA) isn't the only organization watching who visits their site. The White House also appears to be in on this particularly illegal activity. Reports surfaced that cookies, banned by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), not only were being used by the NSA but by the White House as well.
The Associated Press ran a story based on the findings of Richard M. Smith, a software security specialist based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He tagged the NSA for passing out the cookies, which violated OMB rules.
The purposes of cookies, is to document one's behavior, usually in relation to a particular site but can include other things. They are small files that can save passwords and other information. They could be used for shopping carts at retail sites and there many other uses.
The problem is they can stick with you and when they're tagged to you by the NSA or the White House, one can only assume they've done it to monitor your behavior. This is against the law according to the OMB rules. In both cases, the NSA and the White House have said they would correct the problem. Both also claimed to be unaware of the problem.
Regardless of the story, the point is these sites both have violated their own rules. One thing mentioned also is Smith and the AP are going to continue their fact-finding mission to see if any other government sponsored websites fall into the same category. It'll be interesting to see if anything happens legally as a result of this site.
UPDATE In an email this reporter received after the NSA story SPN published yesterday, a reader mentioned a little research they had done on their own. This individual checked their cookie cache and mentioned that they'd received a the same type of cookie when visiting the site of Senator Susan Collins, chairperson of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. They also received the same cookie when visiting the sites of both Bill Frist and Orrin Hatch. It would appear the problems is even more widespread than initially suspected. While these reports are unconfirmed, this wouldn't be unexpected. The individual did say not all senatorial websites had the cookie. They checked out a number of them and they didn't have this problem. But keep in mind, these cookies were CFID and CFTOKEN, the type that last for 35 years. One final note: Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UTAH) says in his site's privacy statement they do not use cookies.
About the Author:
John is a staff writer for SecurityProNews covering cyber security.
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