By Kimmy Nevas
You’ve been sold, or most likely you will be soon.
In June, the Pentagon announced plans to buy or collect data from private companies to create a military recruiting database that would contain the personal information of about 30 million young people, ages 16-25.
The Pentagon is gathering this information from commercial brokers, Selective Service, state driver’s license records and information collected directly by recruiters.
According to the notice published in the Federal Register, cataloged information can include a student’s name, birth date, address, social security number, telephone number, e-mail address, graduation date, grade point average, college and area of post-secondary study, among other information. Data is supposed to be destroyed after five years.
The Department of Defense (DoD) published a notice of the database’s creation this year in the May 23 Federal Register. In a media roundtable one month later, the Pentagon reported consolidation of recruiting lists had actually began three years earlier, was completed in 2003 and has been available to recruiters since 2004, according to the DoD Web site.
Some, however, have protested the database as a violation of privacy.
“[From] creation to initiation two years ago it was in violation of the Privacy Act,” said Lillie Coney, associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
The Privacy Act of 1974 calls for government agencies to publish plans for such databases 30 days before the list is put to use, giving privacy advocacy groups time to mount a challenge.
The database, part of the Pentagon’s Joint Advertising and Marketing Research Studies program (JAMRS), includes high school students 16 and older, college students, Selective Service registrants, those who have taken the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB), requested enlistment information since July 1992, current military personnel on active duty and in the Reserves and even those who have asked to be removed from recruitment lists.
Defense Department spokesperson Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke defends the database as a necessary tool to target recruits with particular skills and interests.
“We have lots of jobs, and the database helps us get the right brains for the military. We use it to create the militaries we need to fight the nation’s wars,” Krenke said.
However, none of the 14 purposes listed by the DoD as reasons to create the database include recruiting, Coney said. The DoD reports the information can be used for law enforcement and when the government sues private parties, among other uses.
The No Child Left Behind Act mandated in 2002 that schools provide student contact information to the military.
Colleges are similarly bound by a different act of Congress, the Solomon Amendment.
“Northeastern University complies fully with the 1996 Solomon Amendment which prohibits institutions of higher learning from denying ROTC or military recruiters access to campus,” Director of Communications and Public Relations Fred McGrail said.
Recruiters are also entitled to student names, addresses, telephone numbers, dates and places of birth, educational levels, majors and degrees earned, under the Solomon Amendment.
American Student List (ASL) and Student Marketing Group (SMG), two companies that sell information to JAMRS, have records that fall short of spotless.
According to July reports from the Electronic Privacy Information Center, “American Student List has settled a case with the [Federal Trade Commission] over deceptive data collection practices. ASL surveyed high school students, claiming the data would be used for educational purposes, but then sold the data for general commercial purposes.”
On Oct. 18, more than 100 civil liberty, religious, parent and anti-war organizations sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, decrying the database as a violation of federal privacy law and demanding that it be dismantled. A project called Leave My Child Alone reports that a form letter requesting to opt out of military recruitment lists has been downloaded 37,000 times from its Web site.
Northeastern students said they weren’t surprised to learn about the database.
“Considering I’m a conspiracy theorist, it doesn’t really surprise me, though I think it’s an invasion of privacy. I figured they had all that on me since the day I was born,” said Robyn Fraser, a graduate speech pathology student.
Brian Guthrie, a junior computer science major, said he thinks the government has no right to collect his private information.
“I’m officially creeped out. I’m not going to join [the military] anyway, so it doesn’t affect me in that regard. But this is not the info I want the government storing. I’m pretty pissed they have my high school records,” he said.
