The Department of Defense will remove some personal information about high school students from a military recruiting database and shorten the amount of time it keeps the information, a civil liberties group announced last week.
The New York Civil Liberties Union brought a lawsuit against the government alleging that the Pentagon was collecting private information about high school students younger than 17 in violation of a 1982 privacy law. In settling the lawsuit last week, DoD agreed to restrict use of the Joint Advertising and Market Research Studies database to military recruiting purposes, to stop sharing the information in the database with law enforcement, intelligence and other government agencies, to stop collecting students’ Social Security numbers, and to provide a clear process for students to be removed from the database.
Students can enter the database in one of three ways: by registering for the Selective Service System, by contacting the military and asking for information, or by being submitted by their school. High schools are required to provide students’ information to the military by the No Child Left Behind Act.
“The students who brought this lawsuit stood up for the privacy rights of all American high school students,” said Donna Lieberman, NYCLU executive director. “Our job now is to spread the word that young people who don’t want to be harassed by the military must do a ‘double opt-out’ — by both telling the Defense Department that they want out of the JAMRS database and telling their high schools not to provide the military with their contact information.”
Last year’s lawsuit claimed the department was flouting a 1982 recruitment law that specifies that it refrain from collecting information on students younger than 17, that it store the information for no more than three years and that the information be kept private, the lawsuit said.
The current database includes information on 16-year-olds, is storing the information for five years, and is being shared with law enforcement and other agencies, the lawsuit said.
Military officials have said they have about 30 million names in the database. The Pentagon said in 2005 the list included high school students 16 to 18 and college students, and included such information as the students’ Social Security numbers, gender and race. — Associated Press
The Pentagon will use “scrambled Social Security numbers” in the revised database, according to the Federal Register notice published last week.
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Q
Jan 17, 2007
High schools are required to provide students’ information to the military by the No Child Left Behind Act.
This should be called No Child Left Alive Act –what business does the military have with something that was suppose to help children catch up in school. this points right at these people who allow bills to be passed without reading them.
Michael Hampton
Jan 17, 2007
Exactly.
So make Congress actually read the bills before they vote on them.
Ken Larson
Jan 17, 2007
USA Today reported on 16 January 2007 in its Washington Section that the CIA plans to utilize more open sources and blogs in its intelligence work and outsource more of its intelligence software development to commercial contractors in an attempt to re-establish itself as the premiere world intelligence agency.
The “Strategic Intent” is posted on the CIA public web site. Defense Industry Daily further reports that General Electric is gobbling up Smith’s Industries for $4.8B.
http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/2007/01/ge-buys-smiths-aerospace-for-48b/index.php
I am a 2 tour Vietnam Veteran who recently retired after 36 years of working in the Defense Industrial Complex on many of the weapons systems being used by our forces as we speak. Let’s look at this for a moment and do our patriotic duty by reading along with the CIA (after all, they have announced they are reading this blog)
1. The new CIA approach comes exactly at the formation of the agency’s new “External Advisory Board”, which consists of the following:
* A former Pentagon Chairman of the Joints Chief who is now a Northrop Grumman Corporation Board Member
* A deposed Chairman of the Board of Hewlett Packard Corporation (HP)
* A Former Deputy Secretary of Defense who now heads up a Washington think tank with Henry Kissinger
2. Northrop Grumman Corporation and Hewlett Packard are two huge government contractors in the Pentagon and CIA custom software development arena. Their combined contracts with the government just for IT are in the multiples of millions. I wonder what the advisory board is filling the CIA’s ear with?
3. Washington “Think Tanks” are fronts for big time lobbies, sophisticated in their operations, claiming non-partisanship, but tremendously influential on K Street. If a lobby cannot buy its way in, why not sit on the advisory board?
4. GE already has the military aircraft jet engine market. In buying Smith’s, it takes one more major defense corporation out of the opposition and further reduces the government’s leverage through competition. GE now joins the other monoliths such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon with tremendous leverage in the $500B +++ per year defense market.
5. Note the synergy that now exists between the Pentagon and the CIA. Note the influence by the major corporations.
6. Also note the balance in your bank account and your aspirations for the generations of the future. Both are going down.
7. The huge Military Industrial Complex (MIC) continues to march. Taxes and national debt will be forced to march straight up the wall to support it. Do you have any “Intelligence†to offer the Pentagon, the CIA and the MIC? For further inspiration please see:
http://www.rosecoveredglasses.blogspot.com
Michael Hampton
Jan 17, 2007
My mind is not for rent to any god or government.
the right
Jun 12, 2007
thank god your mind is not for rent, or we’d all be living in the slums!