This is all over the blogs the last couple of days, we just found out about it this morning.

If you’re going to go the federal government’s Cars.Gov web site for the “Cash for Clunkers” program, it seems they have a privacy clause that states:

“This application provides access to the DoT System. When logged on to the CARS System, your computer is considered a Federal computer system and is the property of the U. S. Government.

Any or all uses of this system and all files on this system maybe intercepted, monitored, recorded, copied, audited, inspected and disclosed to authorized CARS, DoT, and law enforcement personnel, as well as other authorized officials of other agencies, both domestic and foreign.”

Don’t be frightened.

Bloggers are in an uproar over this, and without just cause. As a matter of fact a couple of mainstream media outlets have also ran with this story. What they’re missing is this only applies to car dealers, not consumers. It all began with a broadcast by Glenn Beck, which you can see below.

While I enjoy Glenn Beck, it would appear his IT staff are fairly ignorant. Let’s review it again.

When logged on to the <insert gov’t agency name here> System, your computer is considered a Federal computer system and is the property of the U. S. Government.

This is a standard disclaimer that is displayed when you log into *any* federal system, whether it be via the web, direct connection, modem, etc. They’ve used it for years. Many years ago I had to log into one of the General Services Administration’s (GSA) web sites on behalf of a client. I got the same basic warning.

Keep drinking the kool-aid folks.

No related posts.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 2nd, 2009 at 12:06 pm and is filed under Politics, Web/Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.