16 to 25? Pentagon Has Your Number, and More

This is from the New York Times:

The Defense Department and a private contractor have been building an extensive database of 30 million 16-to-25-year-olds, combining names with Social Security numbers, grade-point averages, e-mail addresses and phone numbers.

The department began building the database three years ago, but military officials filed a notice announcing plans for it only last month. That is apparently a violation of the federal Privacy Act, which requires that government agencies accept public comment before new records systems are created.

I'm not sure which is worst. Is it the Defense Department's failure to accept public comments on this database, or is it the contracting of a private marketing company to manage this database? Some of this information is very detailed and private--grade point averages, height, weight, social security numbers. With the database that includes the names of 3.1 million graduating seniors and 4.7 million college students, this is not something to be used just in case of a draft or national emergency. This is a database designed to analyze market segments, then selectively target those segments with a carefully choreographed e-marketing and direct mail marketing campaign to recruit these young kids into the military.

David S. C. Chu, the under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness, said that the database had been in development since 2002. "Congress wants to ensure the success of the volunteer force," he said at a reporters' roundtable in Washington. "Congress does not want conscription, the country does not want conscription. If we don't want conscription, you have to give the Department of Defense, the military services, an avenue to contact young people to tell them what is being offered. It would be naive to believe that in any enterprise, that you are going to do well just by waiting for people to call you."

Excuse me David Chu? I'm not sure I like the idea of the military developing a e-marketing database that would have flooded a young student's email box with your recruitment spam--along with all the other spam touting viagra, porn sites, mortgage refinancing ads and such. If the military is so worried that they can't get enough recruits to replenish the manpower that the military had used up in their war with Iraq, then by all means--Let's have a draft! Let's put these young kids into the military against their will, have them fight and die in a war they do not believe in. That would certainly generate even greater opposition against the Iraq war, and generate opposition against incompetence of the Republican leadership who had gotten us into this war in the first place.

Don't try to end-run your marketing campaign around the American public.