Pentagon Database Leaves No Child Aloneby
Mike Ferner
All over the country, organized citizens are fighting to restrict the military’s presence in schools. But having recruiters troll high school cafeterias is just one way the Pentagon inundates our youngsters with messages to "Go Army!" Since 2002, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has spent a half-million dollars a year creating a database it claims is "arguably the largest repository of 16–25 year-old youth data in the country, containing roughly 30 million records." In Pentagonese the database is part of the Joint Advertising, Marketing Research and Studies (JAMRS) project. Its purpose, along with additional millions spent on polling and marketing research, is to give the Pentagon’s $4 billion annual recruiting budget maximum impact. And it has lit a fire under civil libertarians, privacy advocates and counter-recruiting activists across the nation. Over 100 organizations recently sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and to the DoD oversight committees of Congress, demanding the Pentagon dump the JAMRS database. Gary Daniels, litigation coordinator for the Ohio ACLU, declared, "The ACLU’s work revolves around personal privacy, but in 2005, it’s almost like the ship has sailed. It’s clear the Pentagon’s database does not bode well for privacy rights." "JAMRS is a much larger issue than recruiters’ presence in the schools," Daniels added. "Students who ‘opt out’ of having their information turned over to recruiters by their school are just shifted into another column in the JAMRS database, called the ‘suppression list.’" With students’ personal information now in the hands of the Pentagon, Daniels estimated that keeping recruiters from contacting youths directly is just about impossible. Air Force Lt. Colonel, Ellen Krenke, a DoD spokesperson, downplayed the significance of the JAMRS database. It was initiated in 2002 and even then, she said, it was not a new project, simply a way to centralize information. "The individual services (Army, Navy, etc.) have been collecting this data since being authorized by Congress to do so in 1982." As for concerns about the sources of the information on these 30 million young people and how it will be used, Krenke said, "Most of the information in the database is collected through commercial vendors and is given by students voluntarily. If requested by law enforcement, tax authorities or Congress, JAMRS is required by law to provide the information. However JAMRS has never distributed these records outside DoD. Nor is it DoD’s intent to share the data to outside agencies." Lillie Coney, Associate Director of EPIC (Electronic Privacy and Information Center), said that Krenke’s reassurances are less than meet the eye. Coney contends that by waiting until May of this year to give public notice it was assembling the JAMRS database, DoD was in violation of the federal Privacy Act for over two years and has kept the public in the dark as to exactly how the information will be used. She characterized the 14 "Blanket Routine Uses" the Pentagon claims as exemptions to the Privacy Act as "a catch-all loophole that allows an agency to disclose personal information to others without the individual's consent," and objects that, to date, the Pentagon refuses to put in writing why they are not requesting information directly from the data subjects, how to correct false information in a record, or how the military intends to notify someone that local, state, or federal agencies have requested their information. Two of the 14 exemptions claimed by the Pentagon will allow it to give any federal law enforcement agency the records of anyone it believes has broken any federal statute, as well as disclose a person’s records for the purpose of "…counterintelligence, or for the purpose of enforcing laws which protect the national security of the United States." Coney warned that this will allow the military to begin creating criminal records on individuals for nothing more than exercising their First Amendment rights. "Compare this to credit reports," Coney explained. "If you didn't know they existed and that they could affect your ability to get a job or a loan, how in the world would you know you need to check them for incorrect information? Imagine what you could do with access to a student's name, phone, social security number, e-mail address, race, employer, grade point average, gender, extracurricular activities, driving record, degree interest, and attained skills if it is shared with any federal government agency, foreign government, as well as state and local governments. If any information in this database is wrong, who will authorities tend to believe? You or the Department of Defense?" Others object to JAMRS because of the extensive involvement of private marketing companies, including maintenance of the database itself. Toledoan Peggy Daly-Masternak has two teenage sons. She started the Student and Family Rights and Privacy Committee, aimed at reducing the military’s presence in the city’s public schools. She says "there are few things these days on which people across the spectrum of viewpoints can unify. Privacy is one. If people knew the extent of the Pentagon’s data collection they would give it a resounding ‘No’ and they would shout ‘DEFINITELY NOT’ to compiling these databanks together under contract to private companies. Yet, this is exactly what JAMRS does." The Pentagon has contracted JAMRS work to:
As the ACLU’s Daniels said, "In a way, the Pentagon is not doing anything private industry hasn’t done for years. The military is trying to turn kids into soldiers and private industry is trying to make them bigger consumers." Daly-Masternak voiced an additional concern. "The sources of data in the JAMRS database include the High School Master File and the College Students File. Both are collected and manipulated by the American Student List and Student Marketing Group…and where do the ASL and SMG get the data they trade for cash? If it’s what the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) recommends schools collect from students, every student from kindergarten through college is in big trouble regarding their privacy. Linking JAMRS to NCES and other such data has the potential for the DoD to create lifetime profiles of everyone," she warned. The U.S. Dept. of Education’s National Center for Educational Statistics publishes the NCES handbook listing over 700 coded bits of information on students, such as: Category 0674: Honors Information – 18 coded options including whether the student made the Honor Roll, Honor Society, or Honorable Mention. 0679: Extra curricular activities – 97 coded options 0689: Non-school activity – 13 coded options from full time employment to patents and inventions. 0710: Education planned – 14 coded options from GED to Ph.D. 0714: Voting status 0715: Other post-school accomplishments "other than employment, education and military service such as elective offices held and books published." 0737: Whether or not the student has gingivitis. Options 2091 to 2094 describe normal gums to "severe gum deviation." 0741: Mother’s first pre-natal visit 0743: Mother’s total weight gained during pregnancy 1070: Meal service transaction date: "The month, day and year on which the student received a particular meal or food service." 1106: Meal service components. Coded options include bread, fruit, meat, milk and vegetable. 9 categories on Early Childhood Program Participation, defined as "Information about a child's care, education, and/or services from birth to enrollment in kindergarten." 16 categories on student employment: In-School/Post-School Employment Status to Number of Hours Worked per Weekend and Employment Recognition. Coney said people should also note that so much information is "floating around in cyberspace" from sites like myspace.com where young people can chat on thousands of topics in exchange for registering their name, email address, date of birth, gender, zip code, and country. "The free time kids have to themselves these days to role play, act out, and just be kids is often spent in the new online ‘backyard,’ but we know that anything placed on the internet can be accessed if there’s a data leak." The Pentagon’s JAMRS web site lists the following as sources for the information in its database:
Some of the research projects JAMRS commissions include:
Donald Rumsfeld’s top adviser on recruitment, pay and benefits for some 3.4 million people on active duty, in the Guard and Reserve, and DoD civilian employees is David Chu. He recently told reporters, "If you don’t want conscription, you have to give the Department of Defense an avenue to contact people." The Pentagon’s JAMRS database is designed to do that in a bigger and better way than ever before. February 4, 2006 Mike Ferner [send him mail] served as a Navy Corpsman from 1969 to 73, was discharged as a conscientious objector, and is a member of Veterans For Peace. |