NCLB Used to Recruit Kids For Low Service Turnout.

Looks like ole W is at it again. This time he is using the No Child Left Behind bill to obtain personal information about students ages 16 and up. The info is then used to try and recruit these kids for the lower than ever enlistment rate. Privacy right advocates are not happy, and schools face losing funding if they don't play ball.

Using NCLB to get recruits is the lowest ever in my book. But what do you expect from that that nutty war president of ours?

Amazing really.

**************

Pentagon creating student database
Recruiting tool for military raises privacy concerns

By Jonathan Krim
The Washington Post
Updated: 2:03 a.m. ET June 23, 2005

WASHINGTON - 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.

School systems that fail to provide that information risk losing federal funds, although individual parents or students can withhold information that would be transferred to the military by their districts. John Moriarty, president of the PTA at Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda, said the issue has "generated a great deal of angst" among many parents participating in an e-mail discussion group.

(SNIP)

Chris Jay Hoofnagle, West Coast director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, called the system "an audacious plan to target-market kids, as young as 16, for military solicitation................................