From: Travis Subject: So Much For Transparency Date: Friday, January 30, 2009,
So Much For All That Transparency <http://jammiewearingfool.blogspot.com/2009/01/so-much-for-all-that-transparency.html> [image: http://.bp.blogspot.com/_1247sh7LYNE/SYMyF15NyBI/AAAAAAAAAy4/XwXueC9ASEk/s1600-h/top_secret.jpg]<http://.bp.blogspot.com/_1247sh7LYNE/SYMyF15NyBI/AAAAAAAAAy4/XwXueC9ASEk/s1600-h/top_secret.jpg> Remember way back when? You know, somewhere around January 21 or so when all the Dems were talking a good game about having transparency in government and none was a bigger spokesperson for this then The One, The Messiah, Mr HopeandChange himself, Barack Obama. Well, just like everything else he has said or promised to reassure those who might be skeptical of him and his socialists leanings, he has also started to backtrack on this pie in the sky talk.<http://news.cnet.com/8301-13739_3-10153244-46.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20> The White House has *silently tripled *the number of Web pages that it forbids Google and other search engines from accessing. Can't have those nasty searches of the White House web sites now, can we? There has already been so many instances of the Obama cult scrubbing websites when embarrassing items are discovered or things disappearing when his actions don't meet his words, so this shouldn't be that big a surprise to those who have been chronicling these acts. Those bloggers drunk on hope who desperately wanted to see proof of Obama's commitment to his campaign promises of transparency and Google Government now find themselves with a difficult choice: they can either accept and acknowledge that robots.txt files are not a set of digital tea leaves through which you can read the new administration, or, if robots.txt does carry weight, they can try to come up with a way of explaining a 200 percent increase in the number of directories blocked by Obama's Web team as *anything but Cheney-esque secrecy*. I wonder how much his good buddies from Google are helping them in crafting these robot blocking files? Labels: Barack [deleted] Obama<http://jammiewearingfool.blogspot.com/search/label/Barack%20%5Bdeleted%5D%20Obama>, CNET <http://jammiewearingfool.blogspot.com/search/label/CNET>, Transparency<http://jammiewearingfool.blogspot.com/search/label/Transparency> *posted by Just A Grunt @ 11:44 AM<http://jammiewearingfool.blogspot.com/2009/01/so-much-for-all-that-transparency.html> * [image: http://www.digg.com/] <http://www.digg.com/>Comments<http://www.haloscan.com/comments/jammiewearingfool/3094531856507992473/>| Trackback<http://www.haloscan.com/tb/jammiewearingfool/3094531856507992473/> links to this post<http://jammiewearingfool.blogspot.com/2009/01/so-much-for-all-that-transparency.html#links> [image: http://www.blogger.com/email-post.g?blogID=37193330&postID=3094531856507992473]<http://www.blogger.com/email-post.g?blogID=37193330&postID=3094531856507992473> GOOGLE DE-BOMBING OBAMA GOOGLE BOMBS - BUSH BOMBS WENT ON FOR YEARS<http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2009/01/google-debombing-obama-google-bombs-bush-bombs-went-on-for-years.html> The poor American people - their brains are being tinkered, tickled, clubbed, monkeyed, toyed and played with like so much frickin playdo. *NATIONALIZE GOOGLE! *(just kidding) but hell, if America has to pick up the tab for every failed Democrat designed bank mess, automotive company blah blah blah then why not reap the profits of successful socialist leaning companies while keeping them honest at the same time. :) [image: http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c60bf53ef01053704023c970c-popup]<http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c60bf53ef01053704023c970c-popup> Unlike Bush's 'Google Bomb,' Google Quickly Defuses Obama's<http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,485632,00.html>FOX NEWS [image: http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/#]<http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/#> A Google search of 'miserable failure' now returns Web sites about the Googlebombs rather than the original pages that were returned. *It took four years for Google to address the "Google bomb" that was lobbed at former President Bush. But it took the Internet behemoth only a few days to defuse the same attack on President Obama.* Four years versus a few days ... Some Googlers are asking why. In 2003, President Bush's detractors successfully gamed the Google search engine <http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/#> by arranging to have countless Web sites link the words "miserable failure" to Bush's official biography on the White House Web site. The result was that when someone typed the search term "miserable failure" into the Google search box, Bush's bio rose to the top of the search results. And that's how it stayed until 2007, when Google developed an algorithm to detect what became known as "Google bombs" and re-directed the term "miserable failure" to non-political pages. Unfortunately for Obama, "miserable failure" reverted back to his bio when he moved into the White House. The new president was also Google-bombed with the phrase "cheerful achievement." But this time, Google stepped in quickly, rectifying the situation in a few days, instead of four years. The difference in time did not go unnoticed. "You let this go on for the entire Bush administration," a reader named w3bgrrl wrote on a Google blog. "But since you bought the White House for Obama, you don't want your candidates harmed … And your claims not withstanding, even liberals know you're liberal." But another writer, Mikkel deMib Svendsen, gave Google the benefit of the doubt. "I do think many of [Google employees] are liberals but I am also 100% confident that the large majority of them are also very professional people that take the job of creating a good and unbiased search engine very, very seriously," he wrote. Google itself said the reason it took only a few days to redirect Obama's Google bomb was that, this time, it already had the algorithm in place. "Though the spirit of change may be in the air in Washington, some things apparently stay the same," Google software engineer Matt Cutts wrote on a Google blog<http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/01/detecting-new-googlebombs.html>. "After we became aware of this latest Googlebomb, we re-ran our algorithm and it detected the Googlebomb for [cheerful achievement] as well as for [failure]. As a result, those search queries now return discussion about the Google bombs, rather than the original pages that were returned." There's more but you know the google.<http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,485632,00.html> Posted by Pamela Geller on Friday, January 30, 2009 at 12:13 PM in Google: eeeeeevil Tool<http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/google_eeeeeeevil_tool/> | Permalink<http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2009/01/google-debombing-obama-google-bombs-bush-bombs-went-on-for-years.html> | Barry Rubin: The Obama administration is already facing an IT controversy: Privacy advocates are criticizing its decision to let third-party cookies be installed in video files on the White House Web site. http://cwflyris.computerworld.com/t/4272627/109335/165772/0/ Cookie use in YouTube videos on WhiteHouse.gov prompts privacy concerns New waiver to Web site's privacy policy lets third-party cookies be included in video files By Jaikumar Vijayan Comments <http://www.computerworld.com/comments/node/9126954> January 28, 2009 (Computerworld) Back when he was campaigning for president, Barack Obama<http://www.computerworld.com/action/inform.do?command=search&searchTerms=Barack+Obama>'s skillful use of Web 2.0 technologies<http://blogs.computerworld.com/president>such as Facebook and YouTube <http://blogs.computerworld.com/will_youtube_elect_obama> enabled him to get his message out to new audiences of voters in an unprecedented fashion. But using the same technologies in his new role as president is already proving to be more controversial. Not even 10 days into Obama's presidency<http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9126365>, some privacy advocates are expressing concern about a White House decision permitting the use of persistent Internet cookies in YouTube<http://www.computerworld.com/action/inform.do?command=search&searchTerms=YouTube+LLC>video files embedded on the redesigned WhiteHouse.gov Web site<http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9126366>. Letting third-party cookies be placed on the site is a deviation from established executive-branch policy that leaves site visitors open to being tracked and profiled without their knowledge, the privacy advocates claim. In a letter mailed Tuesday to White House Counsel Gregory Craig (download PDF) <http://www.eff.org/files/EFF_letter_craig.pdf>, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)<http://www.computerworld.com/action/inform.do?command=search&searchTerms=Electronic+Frontier+Foundation>questioned a waiver that was issued by Craig's office concerning the use of cookies on the WhiteHouse.gov site. The waiver, which is now part of the site's modified privacy policy <http://www.whitehouse.gov/privacy/> allows the use of persistent cookies by "some third-party providers to help maintain the integrity of video statistics." Cookies are small pieces of code that are installed on browsers by Web sites in order to help the sites recognize the computers of users they next time they visit. Data such as the IP addresses of users, the Web sites they're coming from and how long they stayed on a particular site can be stored by cookies. Online advertisers and Web site operators often use such information to build behavioral profiles<http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9110288>for delivering targeted advertising<http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9029181>and content to users. According to the WhiteHouse.gov privacy policy, the persistent cookies will be planted only on the browsers of visitors who specifically click on video links. Users who want to view a video without having the cookies placed in their browsers can download a high-definition MP4 version of the file via a direct-download link, the policy says. Typically, a YouTube cookie is installed whenever a user simply visits a page containing an embedded video. But last week, following some initial criticism of the waiver from privacy groups and bloggers, the White House implemented a technical fix that requires users to click on videos before cookies are placed in their browsers. (Another change was made on Sunday, to remove YouTube's name <http://news.cnet.com/8301-13739_3-10150534-46.html>from the section of the privacy policy detailing the waiver.) In the letter that the EFF sent to Craig, Cindy Cohn<http://www.computerworld.com/action/inform.do?command=search&searchTerms=Cindy+Cohn>, the Washington-based group's legal director, welcomed the White House's quick response in making the fix but said that the waiver continues to raise questions about privacy. Cohn said visitors to federal Web sites should be able to view official information without fear of being tracked either by the government or by third parties such as YouTube, which is owned by Google Inc. That expectation is consistent with the government's own stance on the use of cookies, she noted, pointing to a memorandum<http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/memoranda/m00-13.html>issued in June 2000 by the White House Office of Management and Budget. That memo discussed the "particular privacy concerns" raised by the use of tracking cookies on government Web sites and concluded that cookies shouldn't be used on such sites "because of the unique laws and traditions about government access to citizens' personal information." "The concern is that our access to government information shouldn't be part of the data that Google gets just because the government decided to use a technology from YouTube," Cohn said in an interview today. She added that the issue has become even more important now because a growing number of government agencies and legislators have begun to embed YouTube videos on their sites, perhaps without realizing the potential privacy implications. "Your browsing through government information shouldn't be a data-collection opportunity for private companies," Cohn said. "You don't want to be looking for tax information on a government Web site and then have Gmail pitching tax software. That's creepy." Cohn's letter reminded Craig of Obama's promise to run a transparent government and called on the White House to release information on the reasoning behind its decision to issue the cookie waiver. She also asked the Obama administration to work with YouTube to try to end the retention of cookie data collected from any video file embedded on a government Web site. In addition, Cohn asked the White House to add a link to the WhiteHouse.gov privacy policy near each video, along with specific information about the third parties that might be collecting data, and to look at the idea of streaming the videos directly from its own servers instead of letting YouTube host them. Jeffrey Chester<http://www.computerworld.com/action/inform.do?command=search&searchTerms=Jeffrey+Chester>, executive director of the Washington-based Center for Digital Democracy, also said that the decision to allow the use of persistent cookies in embedded videos is worrisome. Tools such as YouTube's Insight software<http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9072380>could be used to conduct in-depth analysis of the data collected from WhiteHouse.gov visitors, Chester said. And it isn't just third parties that could potentially use the tracking data, according to Chester. Such information could "give the Obama White House a tremendous amount of insight into public behaviors," he said. "Do we really want the government to sanction the use of a consumer-profiling application that links our commercial behaviors with our civic behavior?" How the White House responds to the concerns bears watching, Chester added. "This will be a litmus test on how to balance the interest in using new-media tools with privacy concerns," he said. "You have to work for the same salary the President of the United States works for"...Sen McCatskill on MSNBC at ~ 3:05PM Do you get a WH with that? Private Plane with full staff? Servants? Expense accounts? -- *~@):~{> --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls. * Read the latest breaking news, and more. -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
