June 27, 2005 – Faced with unmet recruiting goals and a seemingly intractable war in Iraq, the Pentagon recently contracted a private company to begin compiling a database of tens of millions of people between the ages of 16 and 25, with the hopes of targeting individuals to serve in the armed forces, the Washington Post reported last week. News of the action provoked a quick response from civil liberties groups, educators and others.
In a joint press release, a coalition of privacy advocates challenged the rule, recently published in the Federal Register. "The DoD (Department of Defense) proposes to ignore the law and its own regulations by collecting personal information from commercial data brokers and state registries rather than directly from individuals," the statement read.
According to Reuters, the database was created in 2003. The May 23 Public Register notice was the first time that the Defense Department officially acknowledged the program, Reuters said.
A Pentagon spokesperson told the Post that it has 12 million names in the database and that stored information could include Social Security numbers, ethnicity, emails, courses of study and grades.
The 2002 No Child Left Behind Act requires schools to provide military recruiters with student contact information.
