Issues with Obama's YouTube Addresses

CNet blogger Chris Soghoian challenges President-Elect Barack Obama in a Monday posting to "ditch" YouTube as the platform for (what seemingly may be) his periodic addresses to the nation. Soghoian argues that Obama should host the videos on a government server. He points out that by embedding the YouTube video on Change.gov, the Obama team has introduced persistent cookies on the site, which is in violation of government policy, and an act not mentioned in the Change.gov privacy policy. (Soghoian links to a Government Executive article on the subject.)

He also criticizes the one-click-away links from Change.gov to more YouTube videos around which advertising is displayed, describing the act of Google hosting Obama's declaring it "tacky," and raising the issue of a conflict of interest between Google (whose CEO Eric Schmidt supported Obama during the campaign) and the Obama administration.