In the letter that the EFF sent to Craig, , the Washington-based group's legal director, welcomed the White House's quick response in making the fix but said that the waiver continues to pose privacy issues.

Cohn said visitors to federal Web sites should be able to view official information without fear of being tracked either by the government or by third parties such as YouTube, which is owned by Google Inc. That expectation is consistent with the government's own stance on the use of cookies, she noted, pointing to a issued in June 2000 by the White House Office of Management and Budget.

That memo discussed the "particular privacy concerns" raised by the use of tracking cookies on government Web sites and concluded that cookies shouldn't be used on such sites "because of the unique laws and traditions about government access to citizens' personal information."

"The concern is that our access to government information shouldn't be part of the data that Google gets just because the government decided to use a technology from YouTube," Cohn said in an interview today. She added that the issue has become even more important now because a growing number of government agencies and legislators have begun to embed YouTube videos on their sites, perhaps without realizing the potential privacy implications.

"Your browsing through government information shouldn't be a data collection opportunity for private companies," Cohn said. "You don't want to be looking for tax information on a government Web site and then have Gmail pitching tax software. That's creepy."