Houston Democrats

The Washington Post reports the Pentagon will record personal information including birth dates, Social Security numbers, e-mail addresses, grade-point averages, ethnicity, and the subjects students are studying.

A private firm, BeNow Inc. of Wakefield, Massachusetts, will be responsible for managing and analyzing the data. BeNow is a marketing firm that uses computers to analyze huge amounts of data in order to target potential customers based on their personal profiles and habits.

According to the Pentagon's official notice of the program:

The purpose of the system . . . is to provide a single central facility within the Department of Defense to compile, process and distribute files of individuals who meet age and minimum school requirements for military service.

Privacy advocates are concerned that by using a private firm to create an anaylze personal information, the Pentagon is attempting to circumvent laws that restrict the government's right to collect or hold citizen information.

Some of the information the Pentagon seeks to collect is already given to military recruiters in a seperate program under provisions of the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act (See No Child Left Unrecruited). If a school fails to provide the information requested under No Child Left Behind, it risks losing its federal funding. The military has already used the information disclosed under the No Child Left Behind to contact students at home.

Under the new system, additional data will be collected from commercial data brokers, state drivers' license records and other sources, including information already held by the military.

According to written statements made by Pentagon spokeswoman Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke:

Using multiple sources allows the compilation of a more complete list of eligible candidates to join the military.

This program is important because it helps bolster the effectiveness of all the services' recruiting and retention efforts.

According to the Pentagon, anyone can "opt out" of the system, but the Pentagon will still keep a record of the individual's information. Instead an individual's information will be placed in a separate "suppression file" that will be matched with the full database to ensure those who do not want to be contacted are not.

The West Coast director of the Electronic Privacy Information System, Chris Jay Hoofnagle, has referred to the Pentagon's system as "an audacious plan to target-market kids, as young as 16, for military solicitation."

A coalition of privacy groups wrote the following in response to the Pentagon's announcement in the Federal Register last month:

We support the U.S. armed forces, and understand that DoD faces serious challenges in recruiting for the military. But . . . the collection of this information is not consistent with the Privacy Act, which was passed by Congress to reduce the government's collection of personal information on Americans.

Hoofnagle says that even collecting Social Security numbers is unnecessary. Additionally, collecting the individuals' numbers puts them at greater risk for identity theft. Furthermore, Hoofnagle adds that the private sector already has other methods to accurately track individuals for marketing without using their Social Security numbers.

Another question that such a database raises is what new threat is posed to the millions of high school and college students included in the database if it is broken into by identity thieves? I think it is safe to say that many databases run by private companies thought to have been safe, have already been compromised, exposing individuals' private information to the world. It seems that every week we hear about some new case of massive identity theft from a private company's database. What safeguards are there to protect this information that would make this database less susceptible to hacking?

The Pentagon affirms that the military is "acutely aware of the substantial security required to protect personal data," and it intends to only use Social Security numbers in order to "provide a higher degree of accuracy in matching duplicate data records." The Pentagon adds that it regularly monitors its vendors to ensure compliance with its security standards.

On the issue of how much this new database will cost us, the Pentagon sopkeswoman says she did not know the cost of the contract with BeNow, or even if it was bid competitively. That sounds like a red flag.

According to the Federal Register notice, the data will be open to "those who require the records in the performance of their official duties." It said the data would be protected by passwords.

The system also gives the Pentagon the right, without notifying citizens, to share the data for numerous uses outside the military, including with law enforcement, state tax authorities and Congress.

There are these things called the Privacy Act and the Family Educational and Privacy Rights Act (FERPA).

Here's a political cartoon that appeared on January 28, 2005 in the Washington Post that is quite apt regarding the government's recruitment strategy.

No wonder the GOP is so adamantly against abortion. They're counting on the next generation to enlist to support their militaristic freedom march around the world.