Reports submitted to Congress by inspectors general from 16 agencies showed that as of March 30, seven agencies operated 64 federal Web sites that continued to use persistent cookies. The 16 agencies, including the Federal Aviation Administration and the Treasury Department, represent about a third of the agencies required to send Web audit reports to Congress. With dozens of agencies yet to file reports, the number of sites violating the ban likely will be higher, said Chris Hoofnagle of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. OMB banned persistent cookies from federal Web sites in all but the most unusual circumstances. Persistent cookies were deemed a violation of Web users privacy when it was discovered that the Office of Drug Control Policy was using them to track visitors to its Web site.
Persistent cookies are pieces of computer code placed on an Internet user s computer by a Web site.
They track the user s movement from page to page through the Web site, and some track movement from site to site. In the private sector, companies use cookies to tie online activity to data such as names, addresses and buying habits. Many privacy advocates worry that cookies give the government too much monitoring ability. For example, they fear that monitoring a taxpayer s visits to Internal Revenue Service pages about tax deductions might lead to audits. Until last year, Spotila was head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.