[aldo_14]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/06/23/uncle_sam_wants_your_data/

[q]The US military has retained the services of a commercial privacy invasion outfit to assemble detailed dossiers on all American high school children and college students, according to a report in the Washington Post.

Direct-marketing database outfit BeNow Inc will manage students' information for the US Department of Defense (DoD), in order to sidestep federal regulations limiting the amount of citizens' personal data that government agencies are permitted to retain.

By combining commercial data with information already accessible to the government, the DoD hopes to assemble "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."

Military recruiters will then be able to target qualified candidates over the age of sixteen, with complete dossiers of their educational, economic, and ethnic backgrounds. This will enable them to initiate contact with the most effective sales pitch, emphasizing, say, job security to weak students with poor employment prospects, or prestige assignments to those with records of high academic and/or athletic achievement.

The Pentagon's opt-out plan is absurd. It will require students or parents to submit detailed information to be held in a separate database, and checked regularly against the "working" database, to ensure that there are no matches. Thus one is given no option of withholding the information in the first place, but rather, one gets a mere choice of databases, with all the potential for deliberate abuse and accidental disclosure that this implies.

The DoD says that it is confident that all of its information contractors understand and abide by its (putatively strict) data security practices, so there is no reason for concern.

No doubt MasterCard felt the same way about its payment processor CardSystems Solutions, which recently coughed up 40 million credit card records.[/q]

Data-mining on kinds in order to recruit (conscript?) them into the military - a bit dodgy, no?

[Solatar]

Funny thing is, it doesn't surprise me anymore.

[Rictor]

Yup, it's all about getting the young'uns set on the military path. They're having problem maintaining an all-volunteer military, so they need to milk the population for all the fresh bodies they can.

[Taristin]

Maybe if the leader of the military weren't an asshat vigilante, there'd be more recruitment.

[Unknown Target]

In their defense, an hour's worth of digging could get this info anyway.

But yea, it's stepping over the line, imo.

[Ghost]

911 knows where you live, too.


But I see your point.

[vyper]

Talkin bout a revolution...

[karajorma]

Looks like someone in the Pentagon has been taking Ender's Game a little too seriously.

[Hippo]

I know where I live


I think...

[pyro-manic]

Youth of America! The time has come!


Move to Canada.....

[Stealth]

... HELL no.

j/k.

[IceFire]

I think they are really trying hard not to have conscription...

But I think that maybe its still going to be coming.

[Bobboau]

there the government, of course they know were I live. I mean they've got a freaking cencus buro.

and as for the recrutement tactics, it's been my experience, once you make it clear to them there isn't any way to talk you into the military they give up on you.

"is there any way to get you to serve your nation"
"well, not realy, I'm a big nationalist and everything, but I'm not realy the military type, I'd join if we got invaded or something, but it's have to be something prety big, sorry"
"well alright then, goodbie"
"bie"

(prior to 9/11, I haven't heard from them sence that conversation)

[Nico]

Originally posted by Stealth
... HELL no.

j/k.

That's what the canadians would say, I think

[SadisticSid]

Well so long as nothing gets disclosed I don't see the problem. It's not like these kids don't have free will NOT to join the military.

It's not much different to Voter Vault (using consumer information to target acute sections of the voting demographic) or those irritating companies using credit information to find people who'd be most willing to take finance-destroying loans, really. Although using a private contractor to sidestep regulations does seem a bit stupid.

[Bobboau]

the only branch of the military not meeting there recrutement quotas is the army, IIRC.

[Solatar]

I've got a few friends who want to join up in the military when they get out of highschool, but none for the army. They all want Marines, Air Force, Navy, etc.

[Deepblue]

Thats because the Army is full of tards (at least, according to any Marines...).

[Bobboau]

yeah, Marines are actualy exeeding

[EtherShock]

Originally posted by aldo_14
Data-mining on kinds in order to recruit (conscript?) them into the military - a bit dodgy, no?

Nah, that's what the Prussian education style is for.