Pubdate: Thu, 22 Jun 2000
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2000 The New York Times Company
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Author: Marc Lacey

DRUG OFFICE ENDS TRACKING OF WEB USERS

White House Admits Privacy Concerns

WASHINGTON, June 21 -- The White House conceded today that it might
have violated federal privacy guidelines, and it ordered its Office of
National Drug Control Policy to stop using a software device that
tracks computer users who view the government's antidrug
advertisements on the Internet.

To monitor traffic on its Internet sites for children and parents, the
White House's drug policy office has employed computer files known as
cookies, which are placed in computers electronically -- usually
without the knowledge of users -- to monitor their Internet travels.

The software is widely used by commercial Web sites to record
information about the shopping habits and other interests of their
users. But White House officials said they saw a distinction between
companies tracking customers and the government doing similar monitoring.

"People shouldn't have to worry when they're getting information from
the government that the government is getting information from them,"
said an administration official who worked on the matter.

The firm that installed the devices, DoubleClick, a New York
advertising company that specializes in the Internet, said it used the
monitoring software to measure which ads were most effective in
sending computer users to the drug office's Web sites.

DoubleClick outraged privacy-rights advocates and prompted an
investigation of the company by the Federal Trade Commission earlier
this year when it said it would merge anonymous data about Web surfers
with personal information it has in other databases. The company has
since suspended the plan, awaiting the outcome of negotiations between
the industry and the F.T.C. on voluntary privacy standards.

"It's totally anonymous," a DoubleClick spokesman, Josh Isay, said of
the monitoring for the drug policy office. "It's not used for
profiling. It's not shared with anyone else."

Most large commercial Internet sites, including those of The New York
Times and other news organizations, make use of cookies.

But the White House, concerned about privacy violations, ordered the
practice stopped after it was reported this week by Scripps Howard
News Service. The White House also required the destruction of any
data gathered by DoubleClick and another contractor, the Coleman
Design Group of Washington.

In the Coleman case, visitors to a drug office Web site for parents
were tracked by software that had been installed without the knowledge
of even drug officials, aides said.

"We will take all steps necessary to halt these practices now," the
White House spokesman, Joe Lockhart, said. White House officials said
they did not know if other government sites monitored users but that
if they did the practice would stop.

The drug policy office operates two antidrug Web sites, one for
children and another for parents. It will spend $12 million this year,
part of a $130 million advertising budget, to direct computer users to
those sites.

Computer users visiting certain youth-oriented Web sites receive
banner antidrug ads at the top of their screens. If the users click on
those ads to reach the drug policy office, cookies are installed.

The office also made deals with search engines so that computer users
who search the Internet with drug terms like "pot" or "weed" would
receive antidrug advertisements on their computer screens.

General Barry McCaffrey, director of the drug policy office, was
traveling and could not be reached for comment. But his aides said
they had no idea they had crossed any lines of propriety. "We thought
we were doing the right thing," said Donald Maple, a senior policy
analyst at the office, "and we thought we were being very sensitive to
the nature of privacy."

John D. Podesta, the White House chief of staff, sent a firmly worded
letter to the drug office today asking officials to explain how they
had reached such arrangements.

This was not the first time the office has been forced to scale back
its antidrug campaign. In January, officials said they would stop
reviewing TV scripts under a financial agreement with the networks
that had encouraged them to include antidrug messages in the plots of
shows.

Officials reviewed more than 100 episodes of shows like "E.R." and
"Beverly Hills 90210" before they ran. They said they would continue
to reward networks for shows with strong antidrug themes, but they
would not review the shows until they had been televised.
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