US govt. sites fail privacy test

According to the US Congress's General Accounting Office, only three percent of US government Web sites surveyed are in compliance with privacy guidelines established by the Federal Trade Commission. Even the FTC Web site breaks the FTC's rules, and fourteen percent of the sites allowed third-party cookies. The FTC rules for e-commerce sites mandate that they notify users when personal data is collected, allow them to decide how much information is gathered, let them view the collected data, and protect that data against unauthorized use.

The report has prompted calls for the creation of a cabinet-level information officer with responsibility for all federal agencies' networks. Others have previously supported such a position after various agencies bungled the implementation of major networks.

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