The Times reports on the Obama administration’s efforts to modernize government online privacy policies.

The White House suggests federal Web sites be allowed to use “single-session” cookies during one given citizen visit that won’t do any tracking. These would be akin to those e-commerce sites use to make shopping carts work. They would also like to use tracking cookies to gather data purely for Web-traffic analysis. And finally, they propose to use persistent cookies “with the intent of remembering data, settings, or preferences unique to that visitor.”