New recruiting database is an invasion of privacy

Macon Telegraph | June 27 2005

The Department of Defense has struck upon the worst possible way to fill the ranks of its volunteer Army as the unpopularity of the war in Iraq saps the desire of young people to serve.

It involves two intrusions upon the privacy of young Americans.

One circumvents Privacy Act limits on the amounts and types of data a government can compile on law-abiding citizens. It would hire private firms to mine a huge database of information on young Americans from age 16 up through college graduation.

(No, no, Big Brother isn't watching you. Just someone he pays.)

The second uses that information to make targeted recruiting calls to young people in their homes.

(And here we thought telemarketing was an intrusion from which we have been freed by Do Not Call registries. Silly us.)

Nowadays, placing "cookies" on our computers enables firms from which we buy things on-line to record our purchases so they can solicit us to buy other things matching our interests. Such "targeted marketing" is a minor annoyance which sometimes may present something useful.

But the gathering and organization of information, some of it sensitive, on ordinary citizens is different when government does it.

We have given government powers and capabilities denied to private individuals and firms. Since misuse of them could destroy our freedoms, we have hedged them in with constitutional limits and statutory restraints. Partnering with private firms to avoid those restraints threatens those same liberties.

There is no denying the seriousness of the situation that has led DoD into this mischief.

One major contributor to the present conditions in Iraq was the failure from the earliest days of the war to have enough boots on the ground, including not enough to guard ammunition dumps or prevent urban looting. There are not enough now to both squash the insurgency and build Iraq's security. And keeping even these thin ranks filled has increased the unpopularity of the war at home by lengthening deployments.

The growing doubts about the war are deterring potential volunteers even as Defense Secretary Rumsfeld insists there's "no way" we will install a draft - which, surveys show, would be overwhelmingly unpopular.

But collecting the birth dates, Social Security numbers, ethnicity, drivers license records, e-mail addresses, grade point averages and subjects of study of teenagers pursuing their educations is an unwarranted intrusion on their privacy. Especially since the system will also allow the information to be shared with law enforcement, taxing authorities and Congress itself.

It's a very bad idea, bad as the old-fashioned draft. DoD must find another way.