Obama Exempts YouTube from Collecting Data

Apparently there's a long-standing rule that the federal government can't collect e-data on people that visit the Whitehouse (or other federal agency) website. Obama's team made a teeny-weeny exception...YouTube (owned by Google) CAN collect data (via cookies) relating to videos used all over the Whitehouse site. That's a pretty interesting little kickback, isn't it?

Among contractual lawyers, we tend to use "directly or indirectly" language as a means to avoid a primary party saying, "I didn't do it," when they allow someone else to do whatever it is they're not supposed to do. So the federal government can't collect data, but it can let someone else- Google- do it. Hmmmmmm. Here's a quote from CNET:

While the White House might not be tracking visitors, the Google-owned video sharing site is free to use persistent cookies to track the browsing behavior of millions of visitors to Obama's home in cyberspace.

Now I don't know about you, but that seems like a pretty powerful and important exemption. So on a purely objective level, I think it's pretty fishy.

But- and that's a HUGE BUT (ha ha)- I'm also a firm believer that our government should be at the cutting edge of technology usage, not years behind (as was recently reported). I doubt this little exemption directly relates to that goal, particularly since this isn't about a technical limitation. In the end, Obama so far is pushing the technology envelope in the Office and I hope he continues to do so.

~ Brock