White House Drug Office Tracks Computer Visitors

WASHINGTON - The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy has
taken its anti-drug message to the Internet, and it is secretly tracking
those who find it in the process.

Search for drug terms like "grow pot" on some Internet sites, and an ad
banner that pops up from the drug office may drop a "cookie" program in your
computer that tracks your online activities.

"It's sort of spooky," said Internet consultant Richard Smith, a privacy
advocate and former software engineer.

But despite what one critic called "Big Brother" tactics, the White House
drug office says there's nothing surreptitious going on. The computer
cookies are simply tracking its anti-drug media campaign.

"Cookies" are personal identifiers used to track the Web sites that computer
users visit and what they buy. They identify Internet surfers by the service
they are using to get access to the Internet, and can be matched with other
information online to provide personal identification. Cookies are secretly
inserted in personal computers when surfers visit certain Web sites.

Smith said he inadvertently discovered the U.S. government cookies being
dropped into his computer 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 banner ads steer users to the anti-drug site
Freevibe.com, which is operated by the White House drug office. A tracking
cookie is inserted in the user's personal computer as the site is activated.

Although Freevibe's privacy notice states that "no information, including
your e-mail address, will be sold or distributed to any other organization,"
the site is connected Doubleclick.com. Officials of Doubleclick, a New York
advertising firm that is one of the largest companies gathering data on
Internet user use, told the Senate Commerce Committee last week it is
developing new products that will profile more than 40 million Internet
users.

Freevibe's site says the White House drug office will collect the e-mail
address "only so we can identify your submission." It does not disclose that
it will drop a cookie program in the personal computers of visitors to the
site.

Donald Maple, senior policy analyst with the White House drug office, said
the cookie programs are part of the banner advertising campaign run through
the New York advertising firm Ogilvie and Mather. He said the government is
not getting personal information on visitors to the site.

"We have a specific agreement with Ogilvie and Mather that they will not
provide personal identification," Maple said. He said the advertising
company uses the data to determine which banner ads are effective, and to
tailor the ads to attract more visitors.

Maple admitted one of the anti-drug sites operated by the White House drug
office and visited by 240,000 parents a month seeking information on drug
abuse is itself inserting cookies into the computers of visitors. He said
the drug office did not know this until a reporter pointed it out, and
Tuesday ordered the contractor to disable the program.

"We didn't know it was there," Maple said. "It won't be shortly."

Gary Towning, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy account
at Ogilvie and Mather, said the use of cookies started only this month "to
help us better understand if the (ad) banners are driving people to our
site." He said the advertising firm has also bought the rights to link the
drug office's ads with several words typed in on search engines, including
the word "pot."

"We're not tracking individuals. There's nothing identifying here,'' he
said. "We're trying to understand our media campaign."

Civil liberties lawyers said government tracking of Internet users could
raise constitutional questions involving issues of searches without a
warrant, and questioned why the government is monitoring citizen's Internet
activities.

"This is nothing like what was envisioned by members of Congress," said Eric
Sterling, former counsel to the House Judiciary Committee. Sterling worked
with the panel in 1988 when it drafted the law creating the White House
Office of National Drug Control Policy to coordinate the government's
anti-drug-use policies.

"This is what is fairly called a case of Big Brother, you know as in '1984'
where the government is clandestinely tracking you," said Sterling, now
president of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation lobbying group.

Maple rejected concerns of civil liberties lawyers.

"I can't see anything wrong with it at all,'' he said, adding that the
Internet is an ideal technology to reach young people with anti-drug
messages.