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While I find it questionable that a government agency should be collecting analytics on its visitors in the first place, there are self-hosted analytics tools t

While I find it questionable that a government agency should be collecting analytics on its visitors in the first place, there are self-hosted analytics tools that they can use. One Google search turns up plausible.io which, even if its less convenient than Google would help with trust. It seems we've completely normalized the State conducting mass surveillance, tracking and metadata collection on citizens with the aid of corporate tech giants like Google.

adenylyl 2y ago
The US government does run its own self-hosted analytics platform (https://analytics.usa.gov https://analytics.usa.gov), which the USPS does in fact use. Which makes it all the more questionable that they were additionally using third-party analytics.
- mh- 2y ago
  Offtopic, I chuckled that the top* city visitors come from is Ashburn. That's definitely just a GeoIP database picking up AWS traffic. * (in the last 30 minutes, as of now)
- nighthawk454 2y ago
  > The data come from a unified Google Analytics account for U.S. federal government agencies known as the Digital Analytics Program. Well…
vel0city 2y ago
I don't think basic analytics is objectionable for a government org web service. I'd hope they'd be tracking "Do people use this? What kind of devices do people consume this site on? Is the page even loading properly for most people?" This is analytics data. Or maybe you'd call that "mass surveillance".
- j5155 2y ago
  Sure, basic analytics is not objectionable. The issue comes from the analytics not being limited to basic things, as this post shows.
  - vel0city 2y ago
    > I find it questionable that a government agency should be collecting analytics on its visitors in the first place I don't agree with them using known abusers of personal data for the tooling, but this is what I was talking about. I don't like them using Facebook for analytics, I don't know what they were getting from it. But the basic premise of analytics, I think they should do.
    - advael 2y ago
      Sure, but the answer they gave to this reporter was the same usual corporate garbage response that included "we need analytics to market our products" (???) I think it's fucked up that any agency is "marketing products" at all, but inasmuch as this is necessary in some way, surely they don't need the kind of surveillance marketing that's questionably even worth it for corporate advertisers to use. It literally reads like a google or facebook lawyer wrote it
      - bobthepanda 2y ago
        i mean the entire last few decades or so people have been banging the drum that parts of government, like the USPS, should "operate like a business" or even be privatized. so this being an end result of that is not that shocking, unfortunately.
        advael 2y ago
        What's even sadder is that this is said in an economic and regulatory environment that has gradually winnowed away all the examples of businesses that made the argument even the slightest bit compelling if you squinted
      - kelnos 2y ago
- A4ET8a8uTh0 2y ago
  Some of us do in fact believe that the only way to avoid common issues with mishandling information is not to gather it in the first place. I see sides of the same coin.

adenylyl 2y ago

The US government does run its own self-hosted analytics platform (https://analytics.usa.gov https://analytics.usa.gov), which the USPS does in fact use. Which makes it all the more questionable that they were additionally using third-party analytics.

mh- 2y ago
Offtopic, I chuckled that the top* city visitors come from is Ashburn. That's definitely just a GeoIP database picking up AWS traffic. * (in the last 30 minutes, as of now)
nighthawk454 2y ago
> The data come from a unified Google Analytics account for U.S. federal government agencies known as the Digital Analytics Program. Well…

vel0city 2y ago

I don't think basic analytics is objectionable for a government org web service. I'd hope they'd be tracking "Do people use this? What kind of devices do people consume this site on? Is the page even loading properly for most people?" This is analytics data. Or maybe you'd call that "mass surveillance".

j5155 2y ago
Sure, basic analytics is not objectionable. The issue comes from the analytics not being limited to basic things, as this post shows.
- vel0city 2y ago
  > I find it questionable that a government agency should be collecting analytics on its visitors in the first place I don't agree with them using known abusers of personal data for the tooling, but this is what I was talking about. I don't like them using Facebook for analytics, I don't know what they were getting from it. But the basic premise of analytics, I think they should do.
  - advael 2y ago
    Sure, but the answer they gave to this reporter was the same usual corporate garbage response that included "we need analytics to market our products" (???) I think it's fucked up that any agency is "marketing products" at all, but inasmuch as this is necessary in some way, surely they don't need the kind of surveillance marketing that's questionably even worth it for corporate advertisers to use. It literally reads like a google or facebook lawyer wrote it
    - bobthepanda 2y ago
      i mean the entire last few decades or so people have been banging the drum that parts of government, like the USPS, should "operate like a business" or even be privatized. so this being an end result of that is not that shocking, unfortunately.
      - advael 2y ago
        What's even sadder is that this is said in an economic and regulatory environment that has gradually winnowed away all the examples of businesses that made the argument even the slightest bit compelling if you squinted
    - kelnos 2y ago
A4ET8a8uTh0 2y ago
Some of us do in fact believe that the only way to avoid common issues with mishandling information is not to gather it in the first place. I see sides of the same coin.