NSA Web Site Puts 'Cookies' on Computers

AP alerts us to the latest big news: web sites that put cookies on your computer! Imagine that.

What I actually found vaguely amusing about this article was the inclusion of the paragraphs

The Bush administration has come under fire recently over reports it authorized NSA to secretly spy on e-mail and phone calls without court orders.

Since The New York Times disclosed the domestic spying program earlier this month, President Bush has stressed that his executive order allowing the eavesdropping was limited to people with known links to al-Qaida.

But on its Web site Friday, the Times reported that the NSA, with help from American telecommunications companies, obtained broader access to streams of domestic and international communications.

followed immediately by the statement, "The NSA's cookie use is unrelated." If cookie use, the story being reported, is unrelated to the other NSA eavesdropping stories, why mention them in the middle of the story?

Of course, the article goes on to quote a security consultant who "questions whether persistent cookies would even be of much use to the NSA."

So, in summary, the news of the day is that the NSA web site was putting persistent cookies of little use to the NSA on visitors' computers and that this practice is unrelated to any eavesdropping operations the NSA may have participated in. All I can say is, thank God for the media, because how else would we get such important information?