Do You Feel a Draft?
I’ve posted about the coming draft before (here and here), and really, the signs couldn’t be clearer — but for the vision-impaired, here’s another pointer from The Washington Post:
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 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.
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.
Full Story at The Washington Post.
Tom Chappell wrote:
From this month’s Harper’s Index:
Posted 23 Jul 2005 at 11:25 pm ¶