White House 'tests' video without YouTube

Why did the White House put up its latest video of the President's weekly address sans YouTube? Chris Soghoian says it's because of privacy concerns. But the White House denies that, the Times reports. The change was just a test, nothing permanent, a spokesman said.

“As the president continues his goal of making government more accessible and transparent, this week we tested a new way of presenting the president’s weekly address by using a player developed in-house,” [Nick] Shapiro said in a statement. “This decision is more about better understanding our internal capabilities than it is a position on third-party solutions or a policy. The weekly address was also published in third-party video hosting communities and we will likely continue to embed videos from these services on WhiteHouse.gov in the future.”

But after detailing the many privacy objections to YouTube, Soghoaian takes umbrage at the White House line.

“I would suggest that the evidence speaks for itself,” Mr. Soghoian said in an interview. “The fact that they are paying for a video solution speaks to privacy issues. The only way I can see they are doing this is that it gives them a finer grain of control over the privacy issues.”

The big privacy objection: long-term tracking cookies. The experimental solution is a Flash-based video player hosted by the White House. If this is the final approach, the White House won't be giving free advertising to Yahoo anymore or exposing all visitors to those cookies.