They know you just turned 18. They know your name, your home address, and probably everything else that you would put on a Selective Service (ie, draft) registration form. So why does the US Gubment bother sending you these notices in the mail? Why don’t they just register every 18-year old male, since they already have the mailing list? Is it some sort of litmus test to see if you’re “with us or against us”? Is it designed to filter out people that may have died/left the country/are otherwise not registering?
Did I just answer my own question? 
It’s also to nail down the current address of people who just went away to college, which is likely the first time they’ve ever lived somewhere other than their parents’ house.
They need your signature to certify that the information is true and correct. (Online registration obviously has no signature requirement)
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Yes, they have access to mailing lists from schools etc. but they’re not always sure A. you’re still alive
B. living at that address C. you’re male. -
The Selective Service Registration law requires males to proactively register (ie do something). The notice is also a reminder for you to do so.
Da gubmint already knows youse sex, youse age and youse income. The do draft registration so they can look prepared to the general public and not like some soft commie pacifist gubmint. The census gives all of this information. I registered when I was 18 and never heard nuttin! Nuttin!
I don’t know but I’ve been told
Prufrock wore his trousers rolled!
Shakespeare wrote some lurid plays,
None about mid summer days!
Sound off!
English majors marching chant
And remember, not registering will usually come back to bite you only when you seek financial aid for college, a home loan, a goverment-based job, etc. That is, no one really realizes you haven’t registered until the right (or wrong, depending on yr outlook) person punches in yr SS# and it gets flagged. Chances are, the MPs aren’t going to show up on yr 19th birthday to drag you jail. (Not that I recommend not registering). Obviously, the government isn’t keeping exceedingly close tabs on our young males…hopefully…
Are males who haven’t registered with Selective Service allowed to vote?
My friend went for a year after he turned 18 before they sent him a notice saying he was overdue.
Go figure.
When I registered, it was in the middle of the fall semester of my freshman year of college, 1982. The next semester I wanted to work at the college with a Work/Study grant. But they needed my Selective Service number. I waited and waited, until they sent me a note saying that I didn’t need to register for 5 more years.
“Huh?” I said.
They thought I had written “10/28/69” for my birthdate instead of 10/28/64. They were getting thousands of registrations from men born in 1964. But they didn’t have the brainpower to think that maybe my "4"s look a little like "9"s, or to doublecheck my SSN to see that it was issued in 1964.
Needless to say, their mistake made me miss the deadline for getting a job the next semester, as my college’s staff were smart enough to figure out that I was 18. :rolleyes:
It’s very important to register, because if you wait too long (25 or 26) they won’t accept your registration anymore, ever. Then you can never get the government loans already mentioned, or a government job.
But seriously, think about how many times you send the government (state, local, and federal) your name, birthdate, social security number, etc. Voter registration, driver’s license, firearm transfers, selective service… I bet if someone sat down and looked hard at it all, they could link the systems and be done with it. Seems to me there’s a lot of overlap/extra work being done.
but gruven… that’s what governments do…
Plus, it gives them a piece of paper with your signature on it saying Yes, I agree that this is me and I’ll do what the government says or they get to slap me around some.
Chances are that aside from a driver’s license, the draft is the first official government thingie most guys sign.
Hey, here’s something I noticed when I signed up: I was in line ahead of a guy from Michigan (I’m from California). I walk up to the counter and say, “I have to sign up for the draft.” They give me a piece of paper which I go over there to fill out. Behind me, the other guy says, “I need to sign up for the Selective Service.”
Interesting segregation of terms, then and now. Some people call it the Draft, others call it Selective Service, like it’s some kind of specialty item.
Which is a very, very good thing.
Every agency should only have access to the specific information it needs. If they consolidate all their data together, then the opportunity for abuse grows enormously. The clerks processing Selective Service registrations need your name, birthday, etc. Do you really want them to be able to browse your IRS records and FBI file at their leisure? If you consolidate the data, the effort and money that would have to be spent on an access control and rights management system would far outweigh the duplication that exists now and the “cost” of a breach would be tremendous.
The comparison to Microsoft’s Hailstorm is left as an exercise for the reader…
When it comes to filling out Federal and State forms, there’s almost always a reference to the Privacy Act of 1974. In many, many cases, it’s illegal for agencies to share your information (specifically SSAN) if it’s not a criminal matter.
Last year when I signed up for classes at my college they sent me a letter saying that I hadn’t yet signed up for the selective service and that they went ahead and did it for me. A couple of weeks later I got a post card from the gov’t basically saying “thank you for registering your sorry ass.” I was 17 when I signed up at my college so I hadn’t bothered to do it myself yet.