Cohn's letter reminded Craig of Obama's promise to run a transparent government and called on the White House to release information on the reasoning behind its decision to issue the cookie waiver. She also asked the Obama administration to work with YouTube to try to end the retention of cookie data collected from any video file embedded on a government Web site.

In addition, Cohn asked the White House to add a link to the WhiteHouse.gov privacy policy near each video, along with specific information about the third parties that might be collecting data, and to look at the idea of streaming the videos directly from its own servers instead of letting YouTube host them.

, executive director of the Washington-based Center for Digital Democracy, also said that the decision to allow the use of persistent cookies in embedded videos is worrisome.

Tools such as could be used to do in-depth analysis of the data collected from WhiteHouse.gov visitors, Chester said. And it isn't just third parties that could potentially use the tracking data, according to Chester.

Such information could "give the Obama White House a tremendous amount of insight into public behaviors," he said. "Do we really want the government to sanction the use of a consumer profiling application that links our commercial behaviors with our civic behavior?"