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Military Recruiters
"The Pentagon claims to allow a teen to opt out, but the information is only put in a so-called "suppression file" and still updated on a regular basis"
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By Paul Katzman
Think that the US military only has information on you through those military recruiters that roam your high school campus? Think again. Youth Radio's Pauk Katzman tells us about some little known loopholes that the government uses to gather information about America's youth.
Most students don't know the various branches of the US Military have nearly unchallenged access to much of their personal information. Other than the clipboard-equipped recruiters who roam public high school campuses, the Military has a variety of other ways to find out about potential recruits.
There is a little-known and little-publicized section of the No Child Left Behind Act that requires all public high schools to provide students' personal information to any Military recruiters who ask for it. Students can submit an opt-out form to prevent this from happening, but these forms are often hard to obtain from school systems and they often stop their records from being given to other more benign organizations like colleges and scholarship funds.
Even less well-known, is a Pentagon-run database known as JAMRS. It contains data on an estimated 30 million 16-25 year olds: such as home and cellular phone numbers, street and email addresses, areas of study and ethnicity. The Pentagon claims to allow a teen to opt out, but the information is only put in a so-called "suppression file" and still updated on a regular basis.
Can the Armed Services really be trusted to gather information about students in a manner that respects personal privacy? As a potential recruit, it doesn't look that way to me.
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