Washington Post article “Pentagon Creating Student Database” (free registration, yada yada)
Genl. Hap Happablap: Now how do we possibly go about organizing an effort to revive our dwindling military forces when so many young kids are against this war, and against the President? And when the use of cellphones, IM, email, and blogs have made traditional uses of landline phone numbers and even addresses passé?
Gomer: Well sir, we could sneak around restrictions stating that the Government has no business keeping a database on its citizens by hiring a private firm to do it for us. This database could include all of their relevant information to be contacted by telephone or by a big butch Marine showing up on their doorstep with pamphlets.
So the Pentagon wishes to create a database of all the vitals, including SSNs, email address, home and cell phone numbers, race, GPA, even economic prosperity, for everybody between the ages of 16 and college graduation. The list would be used to harass young people via telephone and in-person interaction with military representatives into joining the armed forces.
In my mind, the most disturbing part (other than the sheer stupidity of making such a huge, financially succulent database centered on social security numbers):
So, to get out of the list, you need to put all your information, voluntarily, onto another list maintained by the same fucking people?
Maybe it’s the paranoia in me talking, but welcome to the first stage of the draft for the technological age! Congratulations to the various heads of the Armed Forces for coming up with a way to get all the information needed on precisely the people that it’s most beneficial for them to hound, without that pesky PROTECTION OF MOTHERFUCKING PRIVACY! Your enlistment numbers are too low for sustained action in Afghanistan, Iraq, and North Korea (TBA 2006)? Maybe if the military kept its syphilitic war-engorged dick in its pants, and didn’t start front after front, and wasn’t shocked when there’s insurgencies to mire down occupation efforts, then they wouldn’t need the constant influx of virgin blood. If this were treated as being the lives of American men and women dying with little accountability from the administration, and not a giant game of Stratego… And maybe, just maybe, they could try looking at the entire population of every college in this country as the intellectual and professional future, and not a great target demographic.
If this happens to me (unlikely, since I have now graduated college, but might fall back onto this grid for grad school), I’ll tell the 250-pounds-of-pure-muscle Marine to go fuck himself. I’m already doing enough for “national security.”
