Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Barack Obama Wants to Know What You Do on the Internet

In an article titled "U.S. Web-Tracking Plan Stirs Privacy Fears," Spencer S. Hsu and Cecilia Kang of the Washington Post are reporting that the Obama administration is seeking to reduce the Web privacy rules that apply to the Federal government.

Currently, the Federal government is largely banned from collecting data on visitors to its Web sites; however, the Obama administration wants to relax these rules. The excuse for reducing your privacy protections is that the government wants to bring more transparency to government. This claims is ridiculous. Obama's people want to reduce your privacy rights on the Web, because they want to make it easier for them to spy on you. For some reason, Chairman Obama's administration wants to know what sites you visit and how often. You should be deeply concerned about why the Executive Branch wants this information and what they intend to do with it.

Just imagine if you were doing a report on firearms for your job or a class. What if you spent an hour or so browsing Web sites that sell firearm-related products and then visited the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms. The BATF would be able to access your cookies and flag you as someone who has a particular interest in guns. What if you happened to be working on a paper that specifically covers weapons used by terrorists. Who knows what could happen? You might get flagged as a security threat and wind up on a watch list.

Your private life is about to get less private.

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