We all have to do "cookie control" because almost all websites, including this one, need some cookies to function properly. The fun thing from our point of view is that the Crown Prosecution Service uses the same content management system as we do - Drupal - so we know what cookies are actually essential to the operation of the site.

The CPS cookie control system offers the information in the graphic below:

Note that it says "Some of these cookies are essential to make our site work and others help us to improve by giving us some insight into how the site is being used."

Accepting, for a minute, that the Crown Prosecution Service isn't actually very good at English as demonstrated by a significant proportion of its output, we might imagine that this, which is a legal notice, would be accurate. The only conclusion is that there are both essential (aka "necessary") cookies and others.

Necessary cookies are defined, AFTER the "I accept button" and it says (with the odious and dubious Oxford Comma) that the website will "not function properly without these cookies" which can be disable in the browser but not via the cookie control system.

But there is nothing to say what the other cookies are or may be. And there is no option to reject them.

If we want the 'net to be a safe place, surely we should start with governments and the way they use it?