WHITE HOUSE DRUG OFFICE TRACKS COMPUTER USE OF WEB VISITORS

WASHINGTON -- The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy has
taken its anti-drug message to the Internet, and it is secretly tracking
many of those who use its resources.

Search for drug terms like "grow pot" on some Internet sites, and an ad
banner that pops up from the drug office may drop a "cookie" program into
your computer that tracks your online activities.

"It's sort of spooky," said Internet consultant Richard Smith, a privacy
advocate and former software engineer.

But despite what one critic called Big Brother tactics, the White House
drug office says there's nothing surreptitious going on. The computer
cookies are simply tracking its anti-drug media campaign, the office contends.

Cookies are personal identifiers used to track the Web sites that computer
users visit and what they buy. They identify Internet surfers by the
service they are using to get access to the Internet, and can be matched
with other information online to provide personal identification. Cookies
are inserted into personal computers when surfers visit certain Web sites.

Smith said he inadvertently discovered the U.S. government cookies being
dropped into his computer while doing Internet research for pharmaceutical
companies.

White House ads offering information on marijuana pop up when Internet
users search for certain words connected to drugs on Internet search
engines like AltaVista or Lycos. The banner ads steer users to the
anti-drug site Freevibe.com, operated by the White House drug office. A
tracking cookie is inserted into the user's personal computer as the site
is activated.

Although Freevibe's privacy notice states that "no information, including
your e-mail address, will be sold or distributed to any other
organization," the site is connected Doubleclick.com. Officials of
Doubleclick, a New York advertising firm that is one of the largest
companies gathering data on Internet user use, told the Senate Commerce
Committee last week it is developing new products that will profile more
than 40 million Internet users.

Freevibe's site says the White House drug office will collect the e-mail
addresses "only so we can identify your submission." It does not disclose
that it will drop a cookie into the personal computers of visitors to the site.

Donald Maple, senior policy analyst with the White House drug office, said
the cookies are part of the banner advertising campaign run through the New
York advertising firm Ogilvie and Mather. He said the government is not
getting personal information on visitors to the site.

"We have a specific agreement with Ogilvie and Mather that they will not
provide personal identification," Maple said. He said the advertising
company uses the data to determine which banner ads are effective, and to
tailor the ads to attract more visitors.

Maple admitted one of the anti-drug sites operated by the White House drug
office and visited by 240,000 parents a month seeking information on drug
abuse is itself inserting cookies into the computers of visitors. He said
the drug office did not know this until a reporter pointed it out, and
Tuesday ordered the contractor to disable the program.

"We didn't know it was there," Maple said. "It won't be shortly."

Gary Towning, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy
account at Ogilvie and Mather, said the use of cookies started only this
month "to help us better understand if the (ad) banners are driving people
to our site." He said the advertising firm has also bought the rights to
link the drug office's ads with several words typed in on search engines,
including the word "pot."

"We're not tracking individuals. There's nothing identifying here," he
said. "We're trying to understand our media campaign."

Civil liberties lawyers said government tracking of Internet users could
raise constitutional questions involving issues of searches without a
warrant, and questioned why the government is monitoring citizens' Internet
activities.

"This is nothing like what was envisioned by members of Congress," said
Eric Sterling, former counsel to the House Judiciary Committee. Sterling
worked with the panel in 1988 when it drafted the law creating the White
House Office of National Drug Control Policy to coordinate the government's
anti-drug-use policies.

"This is what is fairly called a case of Big Brother, you know, as in 1984,
where the government is clandestinely tracking you," said Sterling, now
president of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation lobbying group.

Maple rejected concerns of civil liberties lawyers.

"I can't see anything wrong with it at all," he said, adding that the
Internet is an ideal technology to reach young people with anti-drug messages.

June 21, 2000

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