Relying on the government to protect your privacy is like asking a peeping tom to install your window blinds. John Perry Barlow

A little known provision of the No Child Left Behind law Passed in 2002 allows U.S. Military recruiters access to records of high school student from the age of 16 up. If the schools don’t comply they risk the loss of their federal funding. They also allow recruiters to actively recrute on high school grounds.

The Pentagon has started a new program that employs a private marketing firm called BeNow Inc. to create a database of high school students ages 16 to 18 and all college students to help the military identify potential recruits. They include information from the Social Security Administration including Social Security numbers. They also include information on race and such.

The last thing these types of companies care about is your privacy. They as a matter of fact make their money by finding out everything they can about you so they can sell better targeting data to their clients.

They also collect data from commercial data brokers and driver’s license records and other sources.

You can withhold your child’s school records by making a request. Not so the other sources. Of course you have to know about it first.

The Pentagon has a system to remove your child’s information. What you do is give them the information on your child, or yours if you are over 18. They put this into another data base file that will be compared to the ones held by BeNow Inc. If a match is found they do not delete the information but merely mark it as not to be used.

Soon some bright boy will hack the company systems, and will be in position of Millions of data base entries on young people including Social security numbers and addresses and birth dates. Much more than is needed to steal identities.

I am not to keen on them going into high schools either. When I was a kid they could only come to school for something like a carrier day and only give a speech to a voluntary audience. They now know everything there is to know about you and can target you inside and out of school.

I am not opposed to the military. I enlisted in The Air Force in 1975 and stayed in for almost 17 years until I couldn’t take the cuts and political games after the first gulf war was over and they started giving most of the military budget to the defense contractors and more and more jobs were transferred to the National Guard.

This little rant has a purpose. My son came home from school yesterday and seemed a little strange. He took a pen out of his pocket and said he had a new pen. He then told me he got this Cross style pen from an Army recruiter along with a bunch of  information.

I told him what I had learned from personnel experience. My own and correcting the misconceptions the recruits that worked under me over the years had.

Rule Number One Recruiters will say anything to get another enlistment. They work one on one with no one to hear what they tell you. Rule Number One Point One,  If it isn’t in writing it is a lie.

Oh, the other reason for this rant? My son is 14 and has been in high school for about 3 weeks. :)