Your big brother gets taller by the minute. Yesterday the Department of Defense was seen holding hands with BeNow Inc., a Massachusetts marketing firm, has they began compiling a database to keep track of all American highs school and college students.
The database will include information like birthdates, phone numbers, email addresses, grade-point averages, ethnicity, subjects studied, and majors.
“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,” official Pentagon statement read.
The new system will collect data from commercial data brokers, state drivers licensing offices, schools, the military, and other sources. All information will be password protected and available to “those who require the records in the performance of their official duties,” according to the notice posted a month ago.
However, with sole control of the database, the Pentagon will retain the right to share the collected information with outside petitioners such as law enforcement or Congress without notifying the person in question.
The Pentagon is allowing for a “do not call list” of sorts. If a person wishes, he or she can have their own information put into a special “suppression file” that denotes the person does not wish to be contacted.
As on might imagine, privacy advocates and those leery of the ever-increasing reach of the government aren’t exactly thrilled with the news. They charge that the new databases is inconsistent with the Privacy Act passed by Congress to restrict the government’s information collection on Americans.
Some question the absolute need for types of information such as social security numbers and ethnicity information. And many worry about the security of a private marketing database in world where information theft from database hackers has been a steadily increasing threat.
