washingtonpost.com
Pentagon Creating Student Database
Recruiting Tool For Military Raises Privacy Concerns

By Jonathan Krim
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 23, 2005; A01

The Defense Department began working yesterday with a private
marketing firm to create a database of high school students ages 16 
to 18 and all college students to help the military identify potential
recruits in a time of dwindling enlistment in some branches.

The program is provoking a furor among privacy advocates. The new
database will include personal information including birth dates,
Social Security numbers, e-mail addresses, grade-point averages,
ethnicity and what subjects the students are studying.

The data will be managed by BeNow Inc. of Wakefield, Mass., one of
many marketing firms that use computers to analyze large amounts of
data to target potential customers based on their personal profiles
and habits.

"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," according to the official notice
of the program.

Privacy advocates said the plan appeared to be an effort to circumvent
laws that restrict the government's right to collect or hold citizen
information by turning to private firms to do the work.

Some information on high school students already is given to military
recruiters in a separate program under provisions of the 2002 No Child
Left Behind Act. Recruiters have been using the information to contact
students at home, angering some parents and school districts around
the country.

(snip / snip)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/
content/article/2005/06/22/AR2005062202305_ pf.html



Cheers, Steve..

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