Jay Inslee: “I want to alert Members this morning to a disturbing report we received in response to our demand for an accounting of…”

“I want to alert Members this morning to a disturbing report we received in response to our demand for an accounting of privacy violations on governmental Web sites. We just received the other day the audit report of the Department of Defense Web sites. We found disturbing information. Of 400 sites that were reviewed, over a quarter of them had privacy violations where Americans' privacy rights were being abused by Federal agencies. There were 128 sites that had unauthorized use of cookies which is essentially a system used to collect personal information on your system placed there by a government Web site. There were 100 sites that had no privacy notice. Perhaps most disturbing, there were seven sites where the government agencies had used Web bugs which essentially are capable of tracking an individual's uses of the Internet. This is extremely disappointing after all of our work on privacy here in this Chamber for the executive branch to be so callously indifferent to people's privacy. I urge Members to be alert to this. We need to work together to make sure that these agencies stop these nefarious practices. Government should start respecting Americans' privacy.”