[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 78 (Thursday, June 7, 2001)]
[House]
[Page H2961]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      INTERNET PRIVACY VIOLATIONS

  (Mr. INSLEE asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, 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.

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