The Daily Background

Apparently, illegally wiretapping U.S. citizens without court approval is not enough for the NSA. AP reports now that the NSA has been ‘inadvertantly’ using banned cookies installed from their website. Choice quotes:

The National Security Agency’s Internet site has been placing files on visitors’ computers that can track their Web surfing activity despite strict federal rules banning most of them.
[…]
“Considering the surveillance power the NSA has, cookies are not exactly a major concern,” said Ari Schwartz, associate director at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a privacy advocacy group in Washington, D.C. “But it does show a general lack of understanding about privacy rules when they are not even following the government’s very basic rules for Web privacy.”

AP story @ CNN.

Reaction

Putting anything new into a government software system, especially at the likes of NSA, is not an easy process and requires plenty of testing and you have to follow multiple steps that are all highly regulated so that problems like this do not happen. What a cheap excuse by the NSA. Cookies are not necessary a big problem but it’s the lies and the violation of US law that bothers me. We have laws in place for a reason.

War And Piece, Digby, and AMERICAblog, and Slashdot are among those covering the story.
Hat tip PDB.

Filed under: NSA Wiretaps, Z-TDB Blog