Leave My Child Alone!

Hold onto your schoolbooks, folks.

Your kids still aren’t safe. Take action. (see end of this post)

Background:
Under the No Child Left Behind Act, there is a provision that requires schools to hand over children’s contact information to the Pentagon. To refuse to do so results in the Federal Government Funds for that school being pulled. Under this provision, parents have the option of requesting that the school not release records of their children – the “opt out” clause.

Common Dreams has posted an article from the Vermont Guardian which learned that Parents cannot remove their children’s names from a Pentagon database that includes highly personal information used to attract military recruits.

This was discovered after many parents had completed the opt-out requirements, only to have their children still be contacted by recruiters.
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.

Not only that, the Pentagon is spending millions of dollars on this effort.

….the Pentagon spends about $500,000 annually to purchase the data from private companies, and has paid more than $70 million since 2002 to Mullen Advertising — a Massachusetts firm whose clients include General Motors, Hooked on Phonics, XM Satellite Radio, and 3Com — to target recruiters’ messages toward teens and young adults.

The Boston Business Journal reported in October that the Pentagon had spent a total of $206 million on the JAMRS program to date, and could spend another $137 million over the next two years.

Civil Rights groups are purusing invasion of privacy claims.

Here is what The Leave My Child Alone coalition is doing:
urging the Pentagon to add an 800 number and online opt-out links to its websites. The group concedes, however, that given reports of massive security breaches at data firms, the fact that the information remains on file “hardly grants parents peace of mind.”

The article concludes with links and information to access for taking action:
Information and action

For more information: http://www.leavemychildalone.org, http://www.jamrs.org/