What is the big deal with the NSA putting cookies on visitors PC’s? Like this is something new in the world of the Internet? Consider, the NSA is one of the penultimate technological agencies in the world. And, oh no, they drop a cookie on your computer. Wow. Amazing.
Probably wouldn’t be a real good idea for lots of Left leaning folks and organizations to make a big deal out of this issue. A quick perusal around the Left-o-web using IE found my laptop with cookies from:
- John Kerry’s offical Senate site
- Dick Durbin’s official Senate site
- Hillary Clinton’s official Senate site
- Harry Reid’s official Senate site
- The Democratic National Committee
- CNN
- Air America Radio (had to make sure people knew I wasn’t referring to the old CIA operation)
- Daily Kos (how about that!)
- Huffington Post
- The New York Times
- The Washington Post
- LA Times
- ABC News
I think that is enough to make my point.
BTW, the ABC one came from opening the story that I linked to. Not necessarily fair to ABC, but that was the #2 hit on Yahoo News for "NSA cookies." The story is at all the other news outlets mentioned. Some of the news outlets dropped multiple cookies, including advertising ones.
And, just for fairness, some Liberals/Progressives/Lefties/whatever that I checked did not drop cookies. They were Michael Moore, George Soros, Nancy Pelosi, and Ted Kennedy. Nor did America Blog, Billmon, Al Franken, or the Democratic Underground. One disclaimer is that I only hit the front page. Sometimes, cookies appear when you leave the front page.
This can’t possibly be as trite and nonsensical as I think it is, can it?
pretty much, yes.
Now, the NSA might have been going and looking where some of the people visiting their site where coming from, just to be on the safe side. But, mostly, it is trite.
Yes, it is. The governmental agencies cruise all kinds of sites – I posted a book meme last spring and the DOJ was on my sitemeter a number of times, so is that spying??? Now if you’re tapping my phone and reading my email, get out of there.
I’ve been to the CIA site (they have jobs for accountants) and the FBI site (they do NOT have jobs for accountants, but they have a nifty White Paper on money laundering and I’m using that in my murder mystery) No cookies from those guys. Which is funny since the Treasury Dept White Paper was a “How To” manual.