The Pentagon has been collecting private information on young people and storing it in a database called Joint Advertising Market Research and Studies (JAMRS) since 2002. Only made public this past May, this operation which is meant to target young people for potential recruitment has raised the ire of civil libertarians, youth organizations and antiwar activists.
The information gathered includes names, social security numbers, grade point averages, ethnicity, education level, high school name, telephone numbers, ages, addresses, field of study, intent to go to college, interest in the military and scores on military aptitude tests.
Much of the information is compiled from records that have nothing to do with recruiting or is collected while children are in school under the pretense of educational purposes.
Dane von Breichenruchardt, an attorney with civil liberties organization US Bill of Rights Foundation, adds that the Pentagon may be collecting private medical information, law enforcement records, and other more sensitive data as well.
He notes that to collect the information, the Pentagon outsourced the project to at least two private database firms, Student Marketing Group and American Students List. Both companies, says von Breichenruchardt, have been under scrutiny by the Federal Trade Commission for either improperly collecting data or for illegally leaking or distributing data.
The project may have been turned over to private companies to delay public scrutiny and sidestep disclosure provisions of federal privacy laws. It took three years for the Pentagon to admit publicly that it was compiling the database.
Privacy advocates and civil liberties organizations have called on the Pentagon to dump the database. Several groups formed the Dump the Database Coalition and have gathered the signatures of more than 100 national, state, and local organizations on a letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
The letter to Rumsfeld states that the signers support the men and women of the US Armed Services, but that they strongly object to the DoD decision to create the JAMRS database. The letter lists the lack of proper notice to the public, the unnecessarily comprehensive information to be included, and the fact that parties who provided the information were not warned of the military recruiting purpose as main objections.
Lillie Coney of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a member of the coalition, adds that the information may ultimately be used for purposes unrelated to military recruitment. For example, if someone included in the database sought federal employment some time in the future, their entire personal history might be available to employment screeners without any disclosure to the applicant.
Pentagon spokespersons say that this database is crucial to military recruitment. David Chu of the Pentagon claims the project is legal and told Agence France-Press that recruitment "is critical to the success of the volunteer force."
Chu added that, "If you don't want conscription, you have to give the Department of Defense an avenue to contact people."
Michael D. Ostrolenk, national director of the Liberty Coalition, which also opposes repressive measures in the USA PATRIOT Act, expressed concern about Chu’s remarks to AFP. "This is a strange statement coming from the military," Osterlenk said. Chu seems to be offering the "strange choice" of either surrendering privacy rights or be denied freedom from the draft, he remarked.
Osterlenk also posed the possibility that the JAMRS database may be used to facilitate a future draft anyway by providing critical private information about training, education, skills, and experiences to military recruiters.
A database that targets potential recruits could make a draft more selective, whereas in the past draftees were randomly chosen by lottery.
The targeting of young people by military recruiters without disclosure of how the government got hold of the information worries Angela Kelly of the Student Peace Action Network. "Young people are concerned that military recruitment is being targeted at them without their consent or knowledge."
Youth activist Oscar Castro of the American Friends Service Committee charged that the database project will only increase serious problems with military recruitment fraud. JAMRS "facilitates enlistment under false pretenses," he pointed out.
A report last May in the New York Times revealed several instances where military recruiters bent rules, even broke laws to enlist unsuspecting recruits fraudulently for military service.
According to the Times, the US Army alone has admitted to 320 "recruitment improprieties" last year but also admits that the real number is likely to be three times that amount. Over 1,100 recruiters were investigated in 2004. "Improprieties" include threats, coercion, and false promises that recruits would not be sent to Iraq. Only three in 10 recruiters found to have committed "improprieties" were relieved of their duty.
Some groups in the Dump the Database Coalition view this issue as directly related to antiwar activities. Clearly, declining recruitment resulting from broad opposition to the war in Iraq is a serious problem and the Pentagon is searching for methods to bolster its war effort.
Other groups regard the issue mainly as a privacy issue and doubt the legality of the JAMRS project.
"Government agencies, including the DOD, have legitimate needs for information about US residents, but they also have a legal obligation to observe laws enacted to protect people’s privacy," said Nancy Talanian, director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee.
"When Congress passed the Privacy Act," adds Talanian, "its intention was not that the government should turn instead to the private sector for unlimited personal information without prohibitions on how it may be used."
Osterlenk remarks that he doesn’t object to people joining the service freely, but emphasizes that recruitment should be done without compromising rights to privacy. In this vein, von Breichenruchardt said that one needn’t oppose the war or be anti-military to view Pentagon’s database project as "extremely dangerous" and undermining "personal autonomy."
Correction: The companies that the Pentagon has outsourced to are Mullens, an advertising and marketing firm in Wenham Mass., and their subsidiary, BeNow in Wakefield Mass, that is handling the database. They then buy the information from ASL and SMG, mentioned in the article, who as far as the public notification regarding the database is concerned, are not directly contracted with by the Pentagon.
--Joel Wendland can be reached at jwendland@politicalaffairs.net.
