Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld started a Pentagon program in 2003 called the Joint Advertising and Market Research Recruiting Database (JAMRS). The Department of Defense intended to collect and analyze information on high school students over the age of 15, college students, and others in order to enhance the Pentagon’s ability to target qualified candidates for military recruiting. Perhaps most notably, Rumsfeld did not publish any notice of JAMRS until after it had been established.
It appears that the database holds million of records with information including Social Security number, date of birth, ethnicity, address, grade point average and telephone number. Not surprisingly it is all managed by a private marketing firm outside the Department of Defense and is retained for a period of at least five years. Surprising, however, is the fact that there is no “opt-out” option:
Parents must contact the Pentagon directly to ask that their children’s information not be released to recruiters, but the data is not removed from the JAMRS database, according to Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke, a Pentagon spokeswoman.
Instead, the information is moved to a suppression file, where it is continuously updated with new data from private and government sources and still made available to recruiters, Krenke said. It’s necessary to keep the information in the suppression file so the Pentagon can make sure it’s not being released, she said.
Very Kafka-esque. They have to keep updating your information in a database in order to make sure they are not keeping your current information in the database?
Some investigative reporter might be able to confirm whether there is a connection between this particular marketing firm and a political party, private interest group (e.g. the NRA) or some family name on the hill.
EPIC provides more background and information on their DOD Recuiting Database Page. For example, they explain some of the Bush administration’s back-door dealings to quietly circumvent privacy laws:
The creation of the database caused many to revisit public policy choices made by Congress on military recruiting. As explained above, under the No Child Left Behind law, Congress forced public and private schools receiving federal educational fund to release secondary students’ names, addresses and telephone numbers to military recruiters who request them.