COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Military Recruiting: Student Privacy
Pentagon Database Leaves No Child Alone
Mike Ferner, ZNet
February 5, 2006
All
over the country, organized citizens are fighting to restrict the
military’s presence in schools. But having recruiters troll
high schools cafeterias is just one way the Pentagon inundates our
youngsters with messages to “Go Army!”
Since 2002, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has spent a
half-million dollars a year creating a database it claims is
“arguably the largest repository of 16-25 year-old youth data in
the country, containing roughly 30 million records.” In
Pentagonese the database is part of the Joint Advertising,
Marketing Research and Studies (JAMRS) project. Its purpose,
along with additional millions spent on polling and marketing research,
is to give the Pentagon’s $4 billion annual recruiting budget
maximum impact. And it has lit a fire under civil libertarians,
privacy advocates and counter-recruiting activists across the nation.
Over 100 organizations recently sent a letter to Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld and to the DoD oversight committees of Congress,
demanding the Pentagon dump the JAMRS database.
Gary Daniels, litigation coordinator for the Ohio ACLU, declared,
“The ACLU’s work revolves around personal privacy, but in
2005, it’s almost like the ship has sailed. It’s
clear the Pentagon’s database does not bode well for privacy
rights.”
“JAMRS is a much larger issue than recruiters’ presence in
the schools,” Daniels added. “Students who ‘opt
out’ of having their information turned over to recruiters
by their school are just shifted into another column in the JAMRS
database, called the ‘suppression list.’” With
students’ personal information now in the hands of the Pentagon,
Daniels estimated that keeping recruiters from contacting youths
directly is just about impossible.
Air Force Lt. Colonel, Ellen Krenke, a DoD spokesperson, downplayed the
significance of the JAMRS database. It was initiated in 2002 and
even then, she said, it was not a new project, simply a way to
centralize information. “The individual services (Army,
Navy, etc.) have been collecting this data since being authorized by
Congress to do so in 1982.”
As for concerns about the sources of the information on these 30
million young people and how it will be used, Krenke said, “Most
of the information in the database is collected through commercial
vendors and is given by students voluntarily. If requested by
law enforcement, tax authorities or Congress, JAMRS is required
by law to provide the information. However JAMRS has never
distributed these records outside DoD. Nor is it DoD’s
intent to share the data to outside agencies.”
Lillie Coney, Associate Director of EPIC (Electronic Privacy and
Information Center), said that Krenke’s reassurances are less
than meet the eye.
Coney contends that by waiting until May of this year to give public
notice it was assembling the JAMRS database, DoD was in violation of
the federal Privacy Act for over two years and has kept the public in
the dark as to exactly how the information will be used.
She characterized the 14 “Blanket Routine Uses” the
Pentagon claims as exemptions to the Privacy Act as “a catch-all
loophole that allows an agency to disclose personal information to
others without the individual's consent,” and objects that, to
date, the Pentagon refuses to put in writing why they are not
requesting information directly from the data subjects, how to correct
false information in a record, or how the military intends to notify
someone that local, state, or federal agencies have requested their
information.
Two of the 14 exemptions claimed by the Pentagon will allow it to give
any federal law enforcement agency the records of anyone it believes
has broken any federal statute, as well as disclose a person’s
records for the purpose of “…counterintelligence, or for
the purpose of enforcing laws which protect the national security of
the United States.” Coney warned that this will allow the
military to begin creating criminal records on individuals for nothing
more than exercising their First Amendment rights.
“Compare this to credit reports,” Coney explained.
“If you didn't know they existed and that they could affect your
ability to get a job or a loan, how in the world would you know you
need to check them for incorrect information? Imagine what
you could do with access to a student's name, phone, social security
number, e-mail address, race, employer, grade point average, gender,
extracurricular activities, driving record, degree interest, and
attained skills if it is shared with any federal government agency,
foreign government, as well as state and local governments. If
any information in this database is wrong, who will authorities tend to
believe? You or the Department of Defense?”
Others object to JAMRS because of the extensive involvement of private
marketing companies, including maintenance of the database itself.
Toledoan Peggy Daly-Masternak has two teenage sons. She started
the Student and Family Rights and Privacy Committee, aimed at reducing
the military’s presence in the city’s public schools.
She says “there are few things these days on which people across
the spectrum of viewpoints can unify. Privacy is one. If
people knew the extent of the Pentagon’s data collection they
would give it a resounding ‘No’ and they would shout
‘DEFINITELY NOT’ to compiling these databanks together
under contract to private companies. Yet, this is exactly what JAMRS
does.”
The Pentagon has contracted JAMRS work to:
Mullen Advertising Corp., one of over 100 subsidiaries of the
Interpublic Group, a global advertising conglomerate with $6.4 billion
in annual revenues and operations in 130 countries.
Benow Corp., Mullen’s subcontractor to manage the database.
Benow was recently purchased by Equifax, Inc. which describes itself as
“a global leader in turning information into intelligence.”
Equifax generates $1.2 billion annually by selling marketing services
to businesses and credit reports to individuals.
American Student List Corp. (ASL), and Student Marketing Group Corp.
(SMG), two companies that specialize in gathering information from
students, sell JAMRS some of the data it uses. According to
EPIC, both these companies have faced legal action for using deceptive
practices in collecting information from students.
·
Teenage Research Unlimited: (TRU) is one of the companies from which
JAMRS purchases “information on attitudes of youth…on a
wide variety of topics”
TRU’s web site claims it is “the first marketing-research
firm to specialize exclusively in teenagers,” with a vision
“to develop an unparalleled expertise in the teenage market, and
to offer our clients virtually unlimited methods for researching
teens.”
At the bottom of the company’s “about us” page, TRU
states it “regularly applies its expertise to the
‘unmarketing’ of high-risk youth behaviors. As an
advocate for teens, TRU has worked on a number of important
social-marketing issues, including: anti-tobacco and drug use, sexual
assault, life safety, education, crisis management, and skin
cancer.” What it calls its social-marketing clients
include the American Cancer Society, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids,
various state health departments, and Kidspeace, a group with a mission
to “give hope, help and healing to children facing crisis,”
including a web page advising how to help children cope with war.
The much longer list of TRU corporate clients include Abercrombie and
Fitch, Calvin Klein, Target, Hill and Knowlton, Channel 1, CosmoGirl,
Cartoon Network, MTV, Time-Warner, WB Network, AT&T, Microsoft,
Verizon Wireless; VISA, Avon, Proctor and Gamble, Johnson and Johnson,
Heinz, Kraft, General Mills, Taco Bell; and lastly, an
“Other” category ranging from the Master Lock Co., to the
National Association of Chain Drug Stores. Literally at the
bottom of the list is the Department of Defense.
As the ACLU’s Daniels said, “In a way, the Pentagon is not
doing anything private industry hasn’t done for years. The
military is trying to turn kids into soldiers and private
industry is trying to make them bigger consumers.”
Daly-Masternak voiced an additional concern. “The sources
of data in the JAMRS database include the High School Master File and
the College Students File. Both are collected and manipulated by the
American Student List and Student Marketing Group…and where do
the ASL and SMG get the data they trade for cash? If it’s what
the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) recommends schools
collect from students, every student from kindergarten through college
is in big trouble regarding their privacy. Linking JAMRS to NCES
and other such data has the potential for the DoD to create lifetime
profiles of everyone,” she warned.
The U.S. Dept. of Education’s National Center for Educational
Statistics publishes the NCES handbook listing over 700 coded bits of
information on students, such as:
Category 0674: Honors Information – 18 coded options
including whether the student made the Honor Roll, Honor Society,
or Honorable Mention.
0679: Extra curricular activities – 97 coded options
0689: Non-school activity – 13 coded options from full time employment to patents and inventions.
0710: Education planned – 14 coded options from GED to Ph.D.
0714: Voting status
0715: Other post-school accomplishments “other than employment,
education and military service such as elective offices held and books
published.”
0737: Whether or not the student has gingivitis. Options 2091 to
2094 describe normal gums to “severe gum deviation.”
0741: Mother’s first pre-natal visit
0743: Mother’s total weight gained during pregnancy
1070: Meal service transaction date: “The month, day and year on
which the student received a particular meal or food service.”
1106: Meal service components. Coded options include bread, fruit, meat, milk and vegetable.
9 categories on Early Childhood Program Participation, defined as
“Information about a child's care, education, and/or services
from birth to enrollment in kindergarten.”
16 categories on student employment: In-School/Post-School Employment
Status to Number of Hours Worked per Weekend and Employment Recognition.
Coney said people should also note that so much information is
“floating around in cyberspace” from sites like
www.myspace.com where young people can chat on thousands of topics in
exchange for registering their name, email address, date of birth,
gender, zip code, and country. “The free time kids have to
themselves these days to role play, act out, and just be kids is often
spent in the new online ‘backyard,’ but we know that
anything placed on the internet can be accessed if there’s a data
leak.”
The Pentagon’s JAMRS web site lists the following as sources for the information in its database:
· High School Master File: (HSMF) contains
contact information on nearly four million students for every class
year, covering about 90% of the high school population.
· Selective Service System: contains a listing
of all registrants with the Selective Service System, about 2.5 million
names per year.
· College File: contains basic information on
over 3.4 million college students enrolled in a range of two- and
four-year academic institutions across the country.
· Joint Lead Management System: over 70,000
yearly “influencer (parents, coaches etc.) and prospect
leads” are processed on a daily basis from the individual
branches of the military.
· Permanent Suppression File: this file is update and available the first of every month.
Some of the research projects JAMRS commissions include:
Ad Tracking Study: conducted quarterly to monitor “advertising awareness and imagery” for all military branches.
Adult/Youth Influencer Polls: track “attitudes, impressions, and
behavioral intentions as they relate to and affect military
enlistment.”
The Youth Poll “measures youth's favorability of the military,
perceived knowledge of the military, perceptions of current economic
conditions, and reactions to current events.”
The Parent Poll is targeted at parents of children who’ve
completed the Youth Poll, to see what has an effect on “…a
parent's likelihood to recommend as well as indirectly influence youth
propensity (to enlist).”
College Drop Outs Study: conducted to understand “…how the
Services can capitalize on this group of individuals (ages
18-24).” It was performed by University of Texas MBA
students who volunteered their time as part of a market research
course.
Educator Study: 90 high school teachers and guidance counselors were
polled to “uncover their attitudes toward military service”
and to “develop better understandings of the relationship between
educators – a key youth influencer group – and military
representatives engaged in recruiting efforts on high school
campuses…”
Knowledge Study: “Knowledge about the military and
attitudes toward it have a strong impact on youth's propensity to join
and adults' likelihood to recommend the military…(T)he JAMRS
program began a study in August of 2004 on the types of knowledge that
may affect these attitudes: subjective knowledge (how much one believes
he/she knows about the military), declarative knowledge (knowledge of
military facts) and structural knowledge (how one associates military
concepts) are three types of knowledge thought to affect attitudes
toward the military. This study will be especially
beneficial to military recruiters and advertisers in determining what
youth and influencers need to know about the military, what they need
to believe they know about the military, and how they relate military
concepts, in order to be propensed for military service or recommend
it.”
Media Allocation Project: using services such as Nielson and Arbitron,
“…JAMRS can project how many young people (15-24 &
18-24) saw a branded message and forecast costs by state and by
month. These data have been, and will be, used by the RAND
Corporation, a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and
decision making through research and analysis, to evaluate the
effectiveness of marketing communications and to assess advertising mix
tests (given a certain budget, what is the most efficient mix of TV,
radio, print, etc.). Clemson University has also used these data to
link advertising effectiveness with military applications and
enlistments.”
Mothers’ Attitude Survey: gauges attitudes towards the military
of 270 mothers of 10th- and 11th-graders. The purpose is to
validate JAMRS’ “influencer communications”
strategies that allow recruiters to a) refine approaches towards
friends of mothers who may be strong supporters of the military, b)
help motivate friends of mothers who are undecided about advocating the
military, and c) help avoid alienating mothers who are strongly opposed
to the military.
National Quorum™ Poll: conducted by Wirthlin Worldwide/Harris
Interactive Co., is a twice-monthly omnibus survey that serves as a
trend analysis tool. “The National Quorum…provides
JAMRS the means to get a 'pulse' on public opinion immediately after a
significant event” and to capture the attitudes and opinions of
American adults on various aspects of the military, including the
impact of the war in Iraq.
Studies conducted by the National Academy of Sciences: The JAMRS
site describes an extensive involvement between the Department of
Defense and the NAS, dating from 1999, through the Academy’s
National Research Council. The Council’s Committee on Youth
Population and Military Recruitment has completed two phases of work.
1) “In the first phase, the
committee examined long-term trends in the youth population and
evaluated policy options that could improve youth propensity for and
enlistment in the military.” Their research was published in a
2003 report, Attitudes, Aptitudes, and Aspirations of American Youth
2) “In the second phase, the
committee reviewed military research on advertising and recruiting and
found it often lacked long-term objectives and coordination across
relevant research topics and methodologies. The committee developed an
evaluation framework to assist the DoD in making informed decisions on
the effectiveness of various recruiting policies and mixes of
recruiting resources.” This research was published in a
2004 report, Evaluating Military Advertising and Recruiting, Theory and
Methodology.
The book is helping DoD to improve its research on advertising and
recruiting policies and has been sent to each of the Services’
Market Research Directors and Recruiting Commanders.
Donald Rumsfeld’s top adviser on recruitment, pay and benefits
for some 3.4 million people on active duty, in the Guard and Reserve,
and DoD civilian employees is David Chu. He recently told
reporters, “If you don’t want conscription, you have to
give the Department of Defense an avenue to contact people.”
The Pentagon’s JAMRS database is designed to do that in a bigger and better way than ever before
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