Editorial: Big Brother wants you!

Tuesday, July 12, 2005 | 9:12 a.m.

Three years ago many high school officials around the country reacted with surprise when informed by the federal government that they had to disclose the names, addresses and phone numbers of their students to military recruiters. The requirement was buried in the No Child Left Behind Act, which President Bush signed in January 2002.

Even more of a surprise was a partnership announced last month between the Pentagon and a Massachusetts marketing firm, BeNow Inc. This partnership will lead to a national database of nearly all Americans of high school and college ages. The database will combine information it has gathered from schools with information gleaned from government agencies and private companies. Included will be Social Security numbers, ethnicity and grade-point averages.

The purpose of the database, and the provision in the No Child Left Behind Act, is to enable the military to be proactive in contacting potential recruits. In recent months, with American casualties mounting in Iraq, military recruiting goals, especially the Army's, have been falling short.

People of military age may "opt out" of the databases, but that doesn't mean their personal information won't be collected. It simply means that military recruiters will be instructed not to contact them. We share the same concern that Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., and 61 other House Democrats expressed in a June 29 letter to the Pentagon. "Our concerns lie primarily with the erosion of student privacy rights, the potential for racial profiling and the risk of identify theft," the letter said.

We support military recruiting on high school and college campuses, but in the old-fashioned way of military members in their dress uniforms manning tables at school events and speaking to classes. This way students who are interested may follow up with the recruiter and make informed decisions in consultation with family and friends. A Big Brother-style database can lead to abuses of the information it contains, with recruiters able to target people who are vulnerable from financial or other standpoints. Recruiters are under heavy pressure to meet quotas and there have been reports recently of such unethical tactics.

Our troops should have volunteered for duty because of what they openly learned about the military, and not because of what the military learned about them in compiling surreptitious databases.