DRUG OFFICE MUST TAKE HAND OUT OF 'COOKIE' JAR

WASHINGTON -- The White House said Wednesday that its drug office has been
ordered to stop secretly collecting information on people who visit its
anti-drug Internet sites.

"We will take steps necessary to halt these practices now," the White House
said in a statement released through the press office. The statement said
that contractors working with the White House Office of National Drug
Control Policy also have been directed to destroy all information collected
clandestinely from visitors to the anti-drug sites

The statement said that the White House learned for the first time
Wednesday that the drug office was collecting information from users of the
of "cookies," which are inserted into the computers of individuals when
they visit the sites. (The practice was revealed in a Scripps Howard News
Service story.)

Cookies are identifiers that are inserted into the hard drives of Internet
users as they surf the Web.

The White House drug office employed the cookie technology to determine
what advertisements were drawing people to the their Web sites,
www.freevibe.com and www.theantidrug.com. The agency says that more than
500,000 youths a month are visiting its Freevibe site, which provides
anti-drug messages for young people, and about 250,000 a month are visiting
theantidrug.com, which is a site providing drug information to parents of
teenagers.

The cookies were delivered as part of an advertising contract between the
White House and the New York advertising firm Ogilvie and Mather. In
addition, theantidrug.com site was issuing cookies on its own to visitors,
and blamed a contractor who set up the computer system for the problem.

"At no time has ONDCP (the drug office) requested or received any
personally identifiable information based on the use of 'cookies,' " the
White House statement said.

(Lance Gay is a reporter for Scripps Howard News Service. Reach him at
gayl@hns.com)