White House Continues to Give Preferential Treatment to Google: Exempts YouTube from Privacy Rules
Just a few days ago, we wondered why the White House was giving preferential treatment to Google's YouTube. As CNET's Chris Soghoian points out today, the federal government has very strict rules about using persistent cookies on government sites. However, the new privacy policy for the WhiteHouse.gov site explicitly exempts YouTube from having to follow these guidelines, as the Obama team wants to be able to continue to embed YouTube videos on the new White House blog.
What About the Other Video Sharing Sites?
Last week, we criticized the Obama administration (and others like Allen Stern and Chris Soghoian have done so before us) for giving preferential treatment to Google. While the technology at the White House is apparently not quite up to par, the federal government in the U.S. should be able to stream videos through its own service at this point without making YouTube its default online video service.
We more than appreciate the fact that the Obama administration is trying to be far more transparent and open than any of its predecessors. However, giving a commercial entity this special treatment simply doesn't feel right.
As CNET also points out, the statement on the White House privacy policy that you can download the videos directly from YouTube without YouTube ever setting a cookie is simply wrong.
Here is the full text of the relevant part of the privacy policy (note that the link in the first paragraph is not valid):
The federal government has guidelines for the use of persistent cookies available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/memoranda/m03-22.html#20. The goals of the guidelines are to enable the useful functioning of federal websites while protecting individual privacy.
For videos that are visible on WhiteHouse.gov, a 'persistent cookie' is set by third party providers when you click to play a video. (We may experience some engineering difficulties as the new Whitehouse.gov is posted and reviewed. We intend, however, to fully enforce the above provisions as soon as possible. If you are experiencing any difficulties, please contact us.)
This persistent cookie is used by YouTube to help maintain the integrity of video statistics. A waiver has been issued by the White House Counsel's office to allow for the use of this persistent cookie.
If you would like to view a video without the use of persistent cookies, a link to download the video file is typically provided just below the video.
Share
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all ReadWriteWeb posts
Very, very sad, indeed. Just when I was beginning to think this administration would be FAR more enlightened: two steps forward, one back.
Are you serious? We had a president that ruined this country for 8 years, this guy is in office two days and your bitching about the website?
I just took ReadWriteWeb out of my google reader rss feeds. Goodbye.
Wow, this is such a non-issue.
Umm, who gives a sh*t? I'm glad that he's embracing technology and making it easier to see into the government and get involved with what's going on. Who cares what video service they use. The white house has better things to do than make video streaming services and websites.
I'm with the above 2 posters, I've been thinking for a while about removing RWW from me feeds and forgetting about the site. The posts seem to get more and more pointless. This just put me over the edge. Good bye.
For those deeming it a non-issue, let's pretend the White House only ever gave news stories to one television network (like Fox News for example), and didn't let anyone else cut in on access to the President's Administration...
Ridiculous thing to criticize about. Governments are notoriously bad at getting stuff like this done. Let's applaud their use of YouTube!
Why are you asking the government to waste time, money, and effort trying to build their own technology when existing stuff is freely available to use. Not to mention... freely maintained and continually enhanced by YouTube.
Do we need really an office in the government responsible for building online video technology?!?!
Wow, this is such a non-issue.
Cicekclub cicekci, çiçekçi ve çiçek gönder , çiçek siparişi ver. Günümüzde kutlanılan özel günler arasında en dikkat çeken ve ticari açılımları en fazla gün olan sevgililer günü, gerçekten de tüm dünya çapında hemen hemen aynı gün kutlanması sebebiyle Çiçek siparişi cicekclub. uluslararası bir ticari sektör oluşturmuştur. Sevgililer gününde 2 milyara yakın kartpostal gönderildiği tahmin edildiğinde sanırım bu ticari sahanın ciddiyeti dikkate alınır…Peki ama tüm dünyada milyarca insanın aynı anda kutladığı ve günümüzde adının sevgililer günü olan bu günün geçmişi ne zamana dayanıyor? Aslında diğer özel kutlama günlerinde olduğu gibi sevgililer gününde de efsaneler kol geziyor ortalıkta. Bunlar arasında tarihin bilinmeyen bir diliminde ortaya çıkan Valentine isimli papaz, kralın evlilikleri yasaklamasına rağmen, gizlice aşıkların nikahlarını yapar. Kral ise orduya asker bulamadığı için haklı olarak evlilikleri yasaklamıştır fakat yakalanan Valentine, idama mahkum edilir. Aslında bu enstantane, tarihte geçen Valentine enstantanesinden sadece bir tanesi. Yani Katolik klisesinin kayıtlarına göre geçmişte aşka olan inancı yüzünden öldürülmüş ve 14 Şubat tarihli 3 farklı Valentine kaydı bulunmaktadır.14 Şubat sevgililer gününe cicekclub çiçek göndermek. dair bilgiler günümüze yaklaştıkça efsaneleşmiş bilgiler olmaktan çıkıp daha mantık dolu bir hal almaktadır. Yine bu özel günlerin ortaya çıktığı ve dünyaya yayılma merkezi olan ABD bölgesinden yine bir Amerikalı vatandaş olan Esther Howland tarafından sevgilisine yollanan ilk 14 Şubat tarihli kartpostal, sevgililer gününün günümüz anlayışıyla toplumsallaştığı ilk örneklerinden olmuştur. Çiçek siparişi çiçek gönder cicekclub.Bu tarihten sonra 14 Şubat tarihi daha fazla değer kazanmış ve bu günde sevgililer birbirlerine kartpostallar yollamaya, hediyeler almaya başlamıştır. Artık sembolleşmiş bir gün de olsa, sevgililerin birbirlerine özel birer günleri vardır.
i dont realy understand what this has to do with anything but i am a fan of youtube and i thing mr. president has a good idea idk but there is a lotta info on the ut and if it helps us as a nation well then good. i am all about america and mabey youall are just tripping because i have read lots of that trash on there that so called americans put on there ha ha hope you are scared you should be freaks people are HATERS AND THEY CANT STAND CHANGE guess what ha ha it time and i have been on cloud nine they say the first hundred days make the term well it going to bee a great four years and hope an other four after that!!!! president obama all the way
Wow, talk about some serios lashback from this post. I disagree that this is a non-issue for the same reasons james pointed out. Exclusively giving permission to one private company is simply a bad idea.
As for the actual problem of them not allowing cookies, then suddenly coming out with an exemption for YouTube, it sounds more to me like a smooth-talker from YouTube managed to make a deal with someone who did not know enough about the technology. I feel that this will iron itself out once enough people are made aware of it and the complaints start pouring in. Maybe it will add a little more to the thought of getting actual web experts in charge of the White House's site and web policies.
Complete nonissue.
Why NOT use a commercial company instead of spending millions of dollars on an in-house solution? Why reinvent the wheel? The government has tens of thousands of business deals with private companies. This one is absolutely no different.
This is absurd. The continued harping about this is, frankly, beneath the quality we've come to expect from RWW.
Sure the government COULD use their own video streaming service for this content, but guess what...nobody would watch it!
The US is just like any other company that wants to tap a community (mind you they are doing so because they NEED to, not because they want to sell you something) and they have to play by the same rules as the rest of them if they want to do it successfully.
Rule #1: fish where the fish are.
Who cares? You're just looking for something to complain about.
Not a big deal to me. I think we'd see a riot if the White House decided "fine, we'll encode everything in Windows Media Video with DRM and you need .NET, a Passport account and Silverlight to see anything. Got an iPhone? Tough luck, you'll need a Zune!"
I see your point, and YouTube and flash are de facto standards by now.
Posted by: Ignace Rodriguez
|
January 30, 2009 2:33 PM
http://www.gardenyacicek.com