Under the “No Child Left Behind Act,” school systems that failed to provide information to military recruiters already risked forfeiting federal funding. However, having missed recruiting targets in four straight months, the U.S. military has become even more desperate as it faces missing its 2005 recruiting goals. In its efforts to bolster a sagging all-volunteer military, the Pentagon has enlisted commercial data brokers to compile, process and distribute a database of 12 million Americans as young as age 16, specifically to help the military identify potential recruits. The plan also gives the Pentagon the right to reveal data to organizations outside the military without going to the trouble of notifying citizens.
BeNow Inc., a Wakefield, Massachusetts marketing company will be managing the database, which contains such personal data on high school students as grade-point averages to ethnicity. Only now being disclosed in a notice under the Privacy Act, the database was actually created in 2003. Pentagon officials have stated that they did not initially realize such disclosure was required.
In its statements, the Pentagon added that anyone may opt out of the system “by providing detailed personal information that will be kept in a separate suppression file.” Can armbands be far behind?