emma_goldman
9th October 2006, 13:35
http://archives. seattletimes. nwsource. com/cgi-bin/ texis.cgi/ web/vortex/ display?slug= dgoodman06& date=20061006& query=goodman
Friday, October 6, 2006 -- 12:00 AM
by David Goodman
Guest columnist
Military recruiters work hard to leave no child off their lists
Special to The Times
My daughter just started high school. This milestone was
marked by the arrival in our home of a ream of paperwork.
Along with the usual bureaucratic permissions, I found
tucked into this package a seemingly innocuous form that
carries extraordinary consequences: Failing to fill it out
might result in my daughter being harassed, assaulted, or
being fast-tracked to fight in Iraq.
This form asks us if we want to opt out of having our
daughter's contact information sent to the U.S. military. If
we overlooked this form, or did not opt out for some reason,
our high school is required to forward her information to
military recruiters. This is thanks to a stealth provision
of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002. It turns out that
President Bush's supposed signature education law also
happens to be the most aggressive military recruitment tool
enacted since the draft ended in 1973.
The military recruiting requirement of NCLB has forced many
schools to overturn longstanding policies on protecting
student records from prying eyes. My local high school, like
most in the country, carefully guards its student-directory
information from the countless organizations, businesses and
special-interest groups that are itching to tempt
impressionable teens. Now, parents and schools are being
shoved aside, and the military is being given carte blanche
access to our kids. Not surprisingly, abuse has followed
closely behind.
In August, an Associated Press investigation revealed that
"more than 100 young women who expressed interest in joining
the military in the past year were preyed upon sexually by
their recruiters. Women were raped on recruiting office
couches, assaulted in government cars and groped en route to
entrance exams . . . . One out of 200 frontline recruiters
-- the ones who deal directly with young people -- was
disciplined for sexual misconduct last year."
Take the case of Indiana National Guard Sgt. Eric P. Vetesy,
accused of sexually assaulting six female high-school
recruits in 2002 and 2003. According to the Indianapolis
Star, Vetesy "picked out teens and young women with
backgrounds that made them vulnerable to authority. As a
military recruiter, he had access to personal information,
making the quest easier."
The NCLB recruiter provision is but one piece of a concerted
effort by the Bush administration to reach unwitting teens
without their parents' permission. In June 2005, privacy
advocates were shocked to learn that for two years, the
Pentagon had been amassing a database of information on some
30 million students. The information dossiers on millions of
young Americans were to help identify college and
high-school students as young as 16 to target them for
military recruiting.
The massive database includes an array of personal
information including birth dates, Social Security numbers,
e-mail addresses, grade-point averages, ethnicity and what
subjects the students are studying. The Pentagon has hired
the Massachusetts- based company BeNow to run the database.
By outsourcing this work to a private firm, the government
is circumventing laws that restrict its right to collect or
hold citizen information.
If you are concerned about how this information on your
children might be used, you should be: The Pentagon has
stated that it can share the data with law enforcement,
state tax authorities, other agencies making employment
inquiries, and with foreign authorities, to name a few.
Students will not know if their information has been
collected, and they cannot prevent it from happening.
The main obstacle to getting kids into the military --
concerned parents -- has at long last been circumvented.
Private companies can now harvest data on children, and
provide recruiters -- some of whom are also now private
contractors -- with the information they need to contact
kids directly.
Should skeptical parents find out that the "Mr. Jones"
calling for Johnny is offering their child a free ticket to
Iraq, the military is spending millions to learn how best to
persuade or bypass these negative "influencers. " One
Pentagon study is focused exclusively on changing mothers'
attitudes to enable recruiters to "exert some influence on
mothers who are currently against military service."
Grassroots groups are mobilizing against the Pentagon's
massive student-recruitment and data-mining campaigns. Leave
My Child Alone (http://www.leavemyc hildalone. org ) offers
online opt-out forms that students and parents can download
and submit to schools to keep their names off of recruiter
contact lists. The group estimates that as of 2006, 37,000
students have opted out of the No Child Left Behind
requirement. Students can also file another form to send to
the Pentagon to have their names removed from the giant
student database.
I signed my form directing our local high school to withhold
my daughter's contact information from military recruiters.
Other parents undoubtedly missed it. When military
recruiters eventually come knocking at their doors, these
families will find out the hard way what President Bush
really meant when he promised to "leave no child behind."
David Goodman is co-author of "Static: Government Liars,
Media Cheerleaders and the People Who Fight Back," published
by Hyperion. He lives in Vermont.
Friday, October 6, 2006 -- 12:00 AM
by David Goodman
Guest columnist
Military recruiters work hard to leave no child off their lists
Special to The Times
My daughter just started high school. This milestone was
marked by the arrival in our home of a ream of paperwork.
Along with the usual bureaucratic permissions, I found
tucked into this package a seemingly innocuous form that
carries extraordinary consequences: Failing to fill it out
might result in my daughter being harassed, assaulted, or
being fast-tracked to fight in Iraq.
This form asks us if we want to opt out of having our
daughter's contact information sent to the U.S. military. If
we overlooked this form, or did not opt out for some reason,
our high school is required to forward her information to
military recruiters. This is thanks to a stealth provision
of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002. It turns out that
President Bush's supposed signature education law also
happens to be the most aggressive military recruitment tool
enacted since the draft ended in 1973.
The military recruiting requirement of NCLB has forced many
schools to overturn longstanding policies on protecting
student records from prying eyes. My local high school, like
most in the country, carefully guards its student-directory
information from the countless organizations, businesses and
special-interest groups that are itching to tempt
impressionable teens. Now, parents and schools are being
shoved aside, and the military is being given carte blanche
access to our kids. Not surprisingly, abuse has followed
closely behind.
In August, an Associated Press investigation revealed that
"more than 100 young women who expressed interest in joining
the military in the past year were preyed upon sexually by
their recruiters. Women were raped on recruiting office
couches, assaulted in government cars and groped en route to
entrance exams . . . . One out of 200 frontline recruiters
-- the ones who deal directly with young people -- was
disciplined for sexual misconduct last year."
Take the case of Indiana National Guard Sgt. Eric P. Vetesy,
accused of sexually assaulting six female high-school
recruits in 2002 and 2003. According to the Indianapolis
Star, Vetesy "picked out teens and young women with
backgrounds that made them vulnerable to authority. As a
military recruiter, he had access to personal information,
making the quest easier."
The NCLB recruiter provision is but one piece of a concerted
effort by the Bush administration to reach unwitting teens
without their parents' permission. In June 2005, privacy
advocates were shocked to learn that for two years, the
Pentagon had been amassing a database of information on some
30 million students. The information dossiers on millions of
young Americans were to help identify college and
high-school students as young as 16 to target them for
military recruiting.
The massive database includes an array of personal
information including birth dates, Social Security numbers,
e-mail addresses, grade-point averages, ethnicity and what
subjects the students are studying. The Pentagon has hired
the Massachusetts- based company BeNow to run the database.
By outsourcing this work to a private firm, the government
is circumventing laws that restrict its right to collect or
hold citizen information.
If you are concerned about how this information on your
children might be used, you should be: The Pentagon has
stated that it can share the data with law enforcement,
state tax authorities, other agencies making employment
inquiries, and with foreign authorities, to name a few.
Students will not know if their information has been
collected, and they cannot prevent it from happening.
The main obstacle to getting kids into the military --
concerned parents -- has at long last been circumvented.
Private companies can now harvest data on children, and
provide recruiters -- some of whom are also now private
contractors -- with the information they need to contact
kids directly.
Should skeptical parents find out that the "Mr. Jones"
calling for Johnny is offering their child a free ticket to
Iraq, the military is spending millions to learn how best to
persuade or bypass these negative "influencers. " One
Pentagon study is focused exclusively on changing mothers'
attitudes to enable recruiters to "exert some influence on
mothers who are currently against military service."
Grassroots groups are mobilizing against the Pentagon's
massive student-recruitment and data-mining campaigns. Leave
My Child Alone (http://www.leavemyc hildalone. org ) offers
online opt-out forms that students and parents can download
and submit to schools to keep their names off of recruiter
contact lists. The group estimates that as of 2006, 37,000
students have opted out of the No Child Left Behind
requirement. Students can also file another form to send to
the Pentagon to have their names removed from the giant
student database.
I signed my form directing our local high school to withhold
my daughter's contact information from military recruiters.
Other parents undoubtedly missed it. When military
recruiters eventually come knocking at their doors, these
families will find out the hard way what President Bush
really meant when he promised to "leave no child behind."
David Goodman is co-author of "Static: Government Liars,
Media Cheerleaders and the People Who Fight Back," published
by Hyperion. He lives in Vermont.