Commentary; Posted: 7/6/05
Parents not required to share information on kids
By Don Heinzman
To enlarge its data base for military recruiting, the U.S. Defense Department wants more information on students 16 to 18 years of age.
One source is the local school district which risks losing its federal aid if it does not give names of students, their addresses and telephone numbers, under a provision of the ěNo Child Left Behind Law.î
Parents need to know that they have the option of not allowing the local school district to release that information.
This new search is for birth dates, Social Security numbers, e-mail addresses, grade point averages, ethnicity and subjects students are studying in high school.
The data will be collected for the Defense Department by a private firm and will be managed by a marketing firm.
It is not clear if local school districts will have to provide even more than directory information to the Defense Department.
The Defense Department will try to collect more data on students from brokers, state drivers license records and other sources.
The U.S. Pentagon says using multiple sources allows it to get a more complete list of candidates eligible for the draft in the event that a military draft is put back into play at some point in the future.
Anyone can opt out of the system by giving personal information that will be kept in a suppression file that will be matched with the regular data to see that it is not used. Social Security numbers will be scrambled to avoid recognition.
While the Defense Department claims it will not use the information other than for recruiting, there are no guarantees.
Other information is being obtained on those over 18 years of age who have filled out forms for the governmentís Selective Service bureau.
According to the official notice of the program, the purpose 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.
Privacy advocates are objecting to this invasion of personal privacy, target-marketing students as young as 16 years of age. They say using private firms to gather the information circumvents the criticism of government doing the actual gathering.
While everyone respects the need for more recruits and enlistees, the question of privacy of personal records comes into play.
Parents should pay much more attention to information requested of all agencies about their sons and daughters, and opt out if they donít want more sensitive information to be used by anyone.
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