Rodney Frelinghuysen: “Mr. Chairman, the intent of my amendment is quite simple. Government Web sites exist to serve the public. They should…”

“Mr. Chairman, the intent of my amendment is quite simple. Government Web sites exist to serve the public. They should not be used to collect personal information about people who use these sites, unless the public chooses to disclose personal information to the government. Recent news reports reveal that some Federal agency Web sites are placing what are called ``cookies'' on the personal computers of people who view and access government Web sites. This cookie technology basically allows the operator of a Web site to follow users around as they visit the site, and has the potential to continue to follow that user around after they have left the site. I think that the use of this cookie technology on government Web sites raises many serious questions. For instance, do we really want the Federal Government to keep information on a user that tells them what page on the National Institutes of Health site the user looked up; how many times the user looked at the site; what time the user visited the site; what information the user downloaded from the site; and where the user went on the Web after they left that particular site? More important, why are they collecting this information? What are they using it for? What could this information be used for? Could it be misused? And, most especially, under what force of law do these agencies have the right to collect this information?”