Chinese Cookies

As the Western media report with indignant glee about China’s attempt to censor individual computers by requiring filtering controls on all PCs sold in country, we should recall that “cookies” already track users movements and identity as they wander across the internet. The cookie stores information from websites in order to personalize your next visit. Some cookies are meant to expire, however there has been much criticism of Google for setting 2038 as the expiration date for its cookies.
See Daniel Brandt at http://www.google-watch.org/bigbro.html

Legislation in the US and in Europe restricts the ability of intelligence agencies to attach cookies to computers that visit their sites, for the simple reason that both the CIA and NSA have been shown to have tracked users in the past.

When the NY Times reported December 29, 2005 that the NSA removed cookies it had set on computers and the CIA removed cookies it has “inadvertently” placed on computers, one should not believe that Chinese intelligence agencies were the first to surveille personal computers. That from which spies are banned, search engines are permitted. Google has a vast cache of information on search preferences of its users. Personal freedom from interference is invoked when restraints are placed on government tracking of computer uses, however another personal freedom, namely consumer satisfaction, justifies commercial profiling of computers.

Advertising and marketing is the key difference between the Google tracking and governmental surveillance. Search engines want to more smoothly address the consumer by knowing his or her preferences. US intelligence agencies do not wish to block an individual users access to dangerous web sites; like commercial search engines, they merely wish to track it. Let's be real, this blog exists on a Google server. That such marketing information might have further uses one can hardly doubt. The Chinese devices were supposedly intended to censor, or “filter,” access to web sites. Western readers no doubt instantly saw the analogy with a parent trying to prevent Johnny from looking at the wrong web sites.

The paradox of electronic media: we are constantly under surveillance, indeed we depend upon being identified when we use a web site. We enjoy the recognition we receive from the internet, that a web site “befriends” us. This same electronic acknowledgement depends upon our identities being stored by some very large cache.

Rather than blocking access to web sites that contain information threatening to the regime, a far more effective strategy is to lead consumers to sites that appeal to them. Before long they will be pulled away from critical sites and directed toward those that bring more immediate and less threatening satisfaction. Most internet consumers freely let themselves be tracked, they want to be recognized and simultaneously protected from Russia teenagers hacking and political fanatics plotting. American internet consumers are politically docile precise because we feel so free.