5 replies to this topic

[Tomk]

If you participate in the US governments cash for clunkers program, do you relinquish the privacy rights to your computer?

[Blottedisk]

Wow...

When logged onto the CARS system, your computer is considered a Federal computer system and is property of the U.S. of America. Any or all uses of this system and all files in this system may be intercepted, monitored, recorded, copied, audited, inspected and disclosed to autirized CARS, DoT, and law enforcement personel, as well as authorized officials of their agencies, both domestic and foreign

[Ben T]

Holy carp**. I don't know where to start except that I can think of several ways around that. One LIBRARY. Two, virtual machine that you use for nothing else. In reality can they really put cookies on a computer that can't be removed? That reminds me about when I was going to apply for a government position (I want to say with the FAA?) but you had to go to there website and it warns that you are entering a government system.

[Ben T]

BTW I just went to the site and it doesn't say that anymore. In fact I didn't see any kind of agreement any where. It did say that it is a government site. Privacy statement:

DOT PRIVACY POLICY
Content updated on August 8, 2006



Our Commitment
We respect your right to privacy and will protect it when you visit our website.

This Privacy Policy explains our online information practices only, including how we collect and use your personal information. It does not apply to third-party websites that you are able to reach from this website, nor does it cover practices of other areas within the Department of Transportation. We encourage you to read those privacy policies to learn how they collect and use your information.

What We Automatically Collect Online
We collect information about your visit that does not identify you personally. We can tell the computer, browser, and web service you are using. We also know the date, time, and pages you visit. Collecting this information helps us design the site to suit your needs. In the event of a known security or virus threat, we may collect information on the web content you view.

Other Information We May Collect
When you visit our website, we may request and collect the following categories of personal information from you:

Contact information
IDs and passwords
Why We Collect Information
Our principal purpose for collecting personal information online is to provide you with what you need and want, address security and virus concerns, and to ease the use of our website.

We will only use your information for the purposes you intended, to address security or virus threats, or for the purposes required under the law. See “Choices on How We Use the Information You Provide” to learn more.

We collect information to:

Respond to your complaints
Reply to your “feedback comments”
Manage your access to restricted areas of the website
Fulfill requests for reports and other similar information
Register you for a member account
Sharing Your Information
We may share personally identifiable information you provide to us online with representatives within the Department of Transportation’s Operating Administrations and related entities, other federal government agencies, or other named representatives as needed to speed your request or transaction. In a government-wide effort to combat security and virus threats, we may share some information we collect automatically, such as IP address, with other federal government agencies.

Also, the law may require us to share collected information with authorized law enforcement, homeland security, and national security activities. See the Privacy Act of 1974 below.

Choices on How We Use the Information You Provide
Throughout our website, we will let you know whether the information we ask you to provide is voluntary or required. By providing personally identifiable information, you grant us consent to use this information, but only for the primary reason you are giving it. We will ask you to grant us consent before using your voluntarily provided information for any secondary purposes, other than those required under the law.

Information Practices for Children
We do not intentionally collect information from children under the age of 13. If in the future we choose to collect personal information from children, we will comply with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

Cookies or Other Tracking Devices
A “cookie” is a small text file stored on your computer that makes it easy for you to move around a website without continually re-entering your name, password, preferences, for example.

We only use “session” cookies on our website. This means we store the cookie on your computer only during your visit to our website. After you turn off your computer or stop using the Internet, the cookie disappears with your personal information.

Securing Your Information
Properly securing the information we collect online is a primary commitment. To help us do this, we take the following steps to:

Employ internal access controls to ensure the only people who see your information are those with a need to do so to perform their official duties
Train relevant personnel on our privacy and security measures to know requirements for compliance
Secure the areas where we hold hard copies of information we collect online
Perform regular backups of the information we collect online to insure against loss
Use technical controls to secure the information we collect online including but not limited to:
Secure Socket Layer (SSL)
Encryption
Firewalls
Password protections
We periodically test our security procedures to ensure personnel and technical compliance
We employ external access safeguards to identify and prevent unauthorized tries of outsiders to hack into, or cause harm to, the information in our systems
Tampering with DOT’s website is against the law. Depending on the offense, it is punishable under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 and the National Information Infrastructure Protection Act.

Your Rights Under the Privacy Act of 1974
The Privacy Act of 1974 protects the personal information the federal government keeps on you in systems of records (SOR) (information an agency controls recovered by name or other personal identifier). The Privacy Act regulates how the government can disclose, share, provide access to, and keep the personal information that it collects. The Privacy Act does not cover all information collected online.

The Act’s major terms require agencies to:

Publish a Privacy Act Notice in the Federal Register explaining the existence, character, and uses of a new or revised SOR
Keep information about you accurate, relevant, timely, and complete to assure fairness in dealing with you
Allow you to, on request, access and review your information held in an SOR and request amendment of the information if you disagree with it.
When the DOT collects information from you online that is subject to the Privacy Act (information kept in an SOR), we will provide a Privacy Act Statement specific to that collected information. This Privacy Act Statement tells you:

The authority for and the purpose and use of the information collected subject to the Privacy Act
Whether providing the information is voluntary or mandatory
The effects on you if you do not provide any or all requested information
View our Privacy Act Notices

Our Privacy Practices
For more information or for comments and concerns on our privacy practices, please contact our Departmental Privacy Officer at privacy@dot.gov.

DOT has conducted Privacy Impact Assessments on applicable systems.

View our Privacy Impact Assessments

Is it a coincidence that it was last updated 3 years ago today or is that the conspiracy theorist in me? I think that with these people we all have to be conspiracy theorists.

Edited by Ben T, 07 August 2009 - 11:36 PM.

[Tomk]

You can't always trust everything on TV but supposedly the warning was removed due to the backlash from the video. I don't know if that means only the warning was removed or if the cookies don't exist.

[appleoddity]

Sorry.. This is ridiculous. Stop believing this junk people!

The guy is a scam artist.

Here's the real scoop behind the whole situation:

http://killfile.news...uter?groupId=87

Geeze... That was obvious without even seeing this site. Whenever you login to a government, school, library, etc., you usually have to accept the disclaimer that files transmitted to them and actions that you perform will be tracked and recorded and used against you if you do something illegal. Every large computer system that I maintain has a disclaimer before the users login. If you're going to use a government website don't you think they are going to track your actions on that website? Especially if they are paying you money. They aren't snooping at stuff on your computer, that's ridiculous.

But, leave it to the media to twist things up and drum up the "conspiracy theorist," in everyone. Lol.

Edited by appleoddity, 08 August 2009 - 12:22 PM.