Another Congressional hand in the cookie jar

Late last year, we – and everybody else – went cookie crazy after the Associated Press found that the National Security Agency – yes, the agency that is doing the warrantless wiretaps – was also using permanent cookies on its Web site. So we all went on the great cookie hunt and, not surprisingly, found many sites that violated the government's no-permanent-cookie policy. [For more, see this link.]

But some of my favorite catches of cookie sites are Congressional offices. Congress doesn't have to follow the laws that they pass, of course -- so they can tell agencies that they cannot use permanent cookies, but then they can go ahead and use them. And then, even more tasty, lawmakers are the first ones to take agencies to task.

Well, turn on your cookie monitors and visit appropriations.senate.gov, because guess who uses permanent cookies.

Even more delicious is that the site has a link to the privacy policy at the bottom of the page, but it doesn't work. It took me here.

I did eventually get to the privacy policy, and here is what it says:

This web site does not use 'cookies' or other means to track your visit to the site in any way.