(2005-12-29) Bogus Nsa Cookie Story

The AP ran a story about the NSA website using persistent Web Cookie-s, including the sentence But Privacy advocates complain that cookies can also track web surfing, even if no personal information is actually collected. Both the Ny Times and Wired News published the story verbatim without adding any info saying "a cookie would only allow surfing among NSA sites to be tracked, no data would be available about the surfer's other behavior". All 3 parties should be embarrassed. So much for the MSM's Professional Journalism.

Jeff Jarvis has a long thread, with plenty of silly comments.

• He also has a thread on a follow-up story involving the White House site's use of WebTrends. I'm actually a little more concerned about that, if the WebBug is from webtrends.com so that WebTrends can aggregate a user's info across other domains with the White House site. I'll have to read a little more to clarify the details...