From a research paper published by some Berkeley researchers: The Obama Administration is considering whether to change policy concerning the use of HTTP cookies on government websites. Currently, government officials require a “compelling need” to use persistent HTTP cookies, and must disclose their use in a privacy policy. In light of this we arbitrarily chose six government websites to determine whether Flash was being used to assign unique values to visitors. Of the 6 government sites we tested, 3 had Flash cookies. Three were set by whitehouse.gov, one of which was labeled, “userId.” Five of these sites used persistent HTTP cookies. Whitehouse.gov disclosed ...