16 to 25? Pentagon Has Your Number, and More By DAMIEN CAVE June 24, 2005 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. David S. C. Chu, the under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness, acknowledged yesterday that the database had been in the works since 2002. Pentagon officials said they discovered in May 2004 that no Privacy Act notice had been filed. The filing last month was an effort to correct that, officials said. Mr. Chu said the database was just a tool to send out general material from the Pentagon to those most likely to enlist. "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 naï¿1Ž2ve to believe that in any enterprise, that you are going to do well just by waiting for people to call you." ... http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/24/politics/24recruit.html -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Government Collected Personal Data onAirline Passengers Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2005 01:08:41 -0400 From: Randall <rvh40@private> To: Dave <dave@private> CC: Declan McCullagh <declan@private> http://tinyurl.com/95o86 Government Collected Personal Data On Airline Passengers Leslie MillerMon Jun 20,11:12 PM ET WASHINGTON (AP)--The federal agency in charge of aviation security collected extensive personal information about airline passengers even though Congress forbade it and officials said they wouldn't do it, according to documents obtained Monday by The Associated Press. The Transportation Security Administration is buying and storing detailed personal information about U.S. citizens who flew on commercial airlines in June 2004 as part of a test of a terrorist screening program called Secure Flight, according to documents that will be published in the Federal Register this week. "TSA is losing the public's trust," said Tim Sparapani, a privacy lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union. "They have a repeated, consistent problem with doing one thing and then saying they did another." Secure Flight and its predecessor, CAPPS II, have been criticized for secretly obtaining personal information about airline passengers and failing to do enough to protect it. [...] _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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