WORLD WIDE WHITE HOUSE SNOOPS

Well, it didn't take long for our Big Brother in the White House to stop
tracking computer users who view the government's anti-drug advertisements
on the Internet.

Or at least to say the tracking had stopped. With this White House, who can
know for sure?

Last week, we learned that the White House Office of National Drug Control
Policy had taken its anti-drug message to the Internet via those annoying
display ads that litter most Web sites and was using the ad technology to
secretly track the lives and the computer habits of those to whom the ads
were displayed.

To avoid getting too complicated, let me just say in the way of explanation
that such ads automatically plant a program known as a "cookie" into a
user's computer that can track that user's online activities. The
information can be matched up with other information to create a user profile.

Many Arkansans learned about this outrageous exercise in Clintonian
snooping from a wire service story that appeared in last Wednesday's
Democrat-Gazette. Scripps Howard reporter Lance Gay recounted how Richard
Smith, a former software engineer turned privacy advocate, stumbled across
the "cookie" while doing Internet research for pharmaceutical companies.

"White House ads offering information on marijuana pop up when Internet
users search for certain words connected to drugs on Internet search
engines like AltaVista or Lycos," the story reported. "The banner ads steer
users to the anti-drug site Freevibe.com, which is operated by the White
House drug office. A tracking code is inserted in the user's personal
computer as the site is activated."

Found out, the White House was quick to give assurances that there was
"nothing surreptitious" going on; the computer "cookies" were simply
tracking the drug office's anti-drug media campaign.

Ri-i-i-i-ght.

Just as quickly, it gave assurances that the program would be disabled.

Conceding that it may have violated federal privacy guidelines by
monitoring the Internet activities of American citizens, the White House
told reporters that it had issued an order to cease and desist the
electronic snooping within hours of its discovery and to destroy any data
gathered in this way.

"People shouldn't have to worry when they're getting information from the
government that the government is getting information from them," an
unidentified administration official later told The New York Times.

Better late than never, I guess, but where was this high-mindedness when
the snooping was set to begin?

Donald Maple, a senior policy analyst with the White House drug office,
claims that he had no idea the that the office was gathering information on
each of the estimated 240,000 Americans who visit the site each month until
a reporter told him so.

Another case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand's doing? We
may never know.

All we know is that the White House got caught red-handed. Given the
constant evolution of computer technology, all we can do is trust that when
we're told the practice has been stopped, the person who's doing the
telling is not only a truthful person by nature, but actually knows what's
going on in his own enclave.

I find this less than reassuring. How about you?

Advances in technology have long since passed my home computer by. I have
full Internet access at work, but I haven't had an account for my home
computer for a couple of years. It's just as well. When I did, periodically
I had to spend quite a bit of time every week or so dumping the "cookies"
that various Web sites had stored on the machine's hard drive. It was easy,
since mine is a DOS-based machine. Folks tell me this type of
house-cleaning is somewhat more difficult with Windows-based computers,
which newer PCs are.

Thank goodness for vigilant computer experts like Richard Smith. Let's face
it, there's a lot more to using a computer than most of us know--or even
want to know.

For instance, the aforementioned tracking device used by the White House
Office of National Drug Control Policy and two contractors to which the
Freevibe Web site is linked is widely used on many commercial Web sites to
record information about the shopping habits and other interests of their
users.

You've probably figured this out based on the ever-growing amount of e-mail
you receive from outfits hawking everything from running shoes and concert
tickets to get-rich-quick schemes.

Many of the Web sites you visit sell the information they gather on you to
other companies. If this possibility concerns you, the first thing you
should do whenever you log onto a Web site is check out their privacy
policy to see whether it meets with your approval.

Then recheck it on each subsequent visit, because it might have changed in
the interim.