We at the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) believe in the importance of openly sharing ideas. At the same time, we believe in mutual respect for the use of each other’s private information. Outlined below is our online privacy policy. If you have questions about this policy, please let us know at privacy@ostp.gov.

We gather/publish information from you on this web site in three primary ways:

• Information entered by you upon registration;
• Information you choose to submit for publication; and
• Information we gather indirectly to analyze general traffic patterns.

1) Information Entered by You upon Registration
You do not have to give us personal information to visit our web site.

To provide you with the opportunity to participate in conversations, such as weblogs, hosted at this Web site, we will require registration and request information upon registration that can be directly associated with you. We call this "Personal Information", and it can include your name, your email address, or another unique identifier, such as OpenID. You can change this Personal Information at any time. While you may use a pseudonym and participate anonymously, we encourage you to identify yourself by your legal name as a means to creating a strong reputation for yourself as part of this online community.

We collect no other Personal Information about you other than that which you choose to provide as part of the registration process.

It is our general policy not to make Personal Information available to anyone other than employees, staff, and agents of the Executive Office of the President unless it is required by law or is disclosed as otherwise described in this policy (e.g. blog comments are displayed with the name the visitor chooses to provide upon registration). OSTP does not sell, rent, exchange or otherwise disclose our mailing lists or information about our site visitors.

2) Information You Choose to Publish
When you submit information for publication on this Web site, the submission will be published with the name you chose to provide upon registration. Any information submitted by you for publication together with your name may be made publicly available. Other Personal Information will not be published.

You should not expect any privacy or confidentiality with regard to information you submit for publication.

3) Information Gathered Indirectly to Analyze General Traffic Patterns
In order to make our site more useful to visitors and for statistical purposes, we automatically log and temporarily store the following information:

• IP addresses, which are the locations of computers or networks on the Internet;
• The types of browsers and operating systems used to access our site;
• The date and time of visits to our web site;
• The pages visited; and
• The address of web sites from which our visitors link to the OSTP web site.

We do not gather, request, record, require, collect or track any user's Personal Information through these processes.

Cookies

A cookie is a piece of data stored by a user's browser that helps a website or service recognize that user's unique computer.  You can remove or block cookies by changing the settings of your browser. 

Session specific cookies may be used on OSTP.gov to improve the user experience and for basic web metrics.  These cookies expire in a very short time frame or when a browser window closes and are permitted by current federal guidelines.

Links to Other Sites

This web site has links to many other government and non-government websites. Once you follow a link to a different website, your actions are no longer subject to this Privacy Policy.

Children’s Privacy

Because we care about the safety and privacy of children online, we comply with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA). COPPA and its accompanying FTC regulation establish United States federal law that protects the privacy of children using the Internet. We do not knowingly contact or collect personal information from children under 13. Our site is not intended to solicit information of any kind from children under 13. 

Internet Security

For site security purposes and to ensure that this service remains available to all users, this government computer system employs software programs to monitor network traffic to identify unauthorized attempts to upload or change information, or otherwise cause damage.

Unauthorized attempts to upload information or change information on this service are strictly prohibited and may be punishable under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 and the National Information Infrastructure Protection Act.

Change to this Policy

We will revise or update this policy if our practices change, or as we develop better ways to keep you informed about them. You should refer back to this page often for the latest information and the effective date of any changes. If we decide to change this policy, we will post a new policy on our site and change the date at the bottom. Changes to the policy shall not apply retroactively.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us at privacy@ostp.gov.


Updated: March 26, 2009