The Googleplex Blog

No Child Left Behind As a Military Recruitment Tool

Did you know that a little know provision (Section 9528) of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 ("NCLB") entitles military recruiters to receive information about students in junior and senior high schools?

These provisions apply to public and private schools both, although private schools may not comply if it is objectionable to their religious principles.

A side note here: One of the school principals we talked to in the spring when we were looking for a new school for Julian insisted on referring to the No Child Left Behind Act as "No child left untested!"

Leaving aside the hypocrisy of NCLB, which is really intended by the conservatives to help gut the public education system by saddling it down with useless testing obligations, everyone who cares about privacy in the age of Google should be worried about the Pentagon's use of this data about kids.

The exact data that is released to the military depends on the school district. In addition to name and address, it probably includes a photograph, date and place of birth, major field of study, participation in sports, height and weight for members of athletic teams, awards, degrees, and so on.

In theory, parents can opt their kids out of this information gathering effort by the Pentagon (see Leave My Child Alone and a position paper from the National PTA organization for more information).

In practice, depending upon the school district, opting out is sometimes discouraged by using the opt-out request to deny information to colleges as well as the military.

The "Pentagon" is nomenclature for the Department of Defense, which uses the provision of the NCLB I've cited along with Section 544 of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2002 as the justification for compiling an immense database on more than 25 million American children. This JAMRS database includes the information I've already mentioned as well as things like GPA and college intentions ("if documented").

The administration of JAMRS has been outsourced to a private contractor, BeNow, Inc. Here's the official description of what BeNow does with JAMRS:

BeNOW is a Mullen subcontractor that provides database marketing services. Specific to JAMRS/Mullen, BeNOW manages, from a technical standpoint, its direct marketing relational database. This JAMRS Consolidated Database is arguably the largest repository of 16-25 year-old youth data in the country, containing roughly 30 million records. It also serves as the primary platform for processing JAMRS' core DM deliverables. BeNOW helps to produce the High School Masterfile (HSMF), Selective Service System (SSS), Joint Leads Fulfillment (JLF), and College and Permanent Suppression releases for the Services to use in their respective marketing/recruiting efforts.

Let's make the corporate interests here even more confusing. Mullen is an advertising agency, and a prime Pentagon contractor. Mullen subcontracted with BeNow to handle database management and mining. BeNow, based in Wakefield, MA, is now part of Equifax, a leading credit information outfit publicly traded on the NYSE.

Here's Equifax's boilerplate description of itself:

Equifax Inc. is a global leader in turning information into intelligence. For businesses, Equifax provides faster and easier ways to find, approve and market to the appropriate customers. For consumers, Equifax offers easier, instantaneous ways to buy products or services and better insight into and management of their personal credit. Equifax. Information that Empowers.

If that description doesn't tell you much, it probably wasn't meant to. But if you've ever had to finance a car or house, you probably know what Equifax does. Certainly, if you've been the victim of identify theft, you'll understand that the security of consumer credit databases leaves something to be desired.

What on earth would move us as a country to hand significant information about our children over on a platter to an abhorrent combination of the Pentagon and a private credit reporting agency? Even apart from concerns about how the information might be used - or abused - can you really feel that this arrangement secures the privacy of the kids involved?

IT Incompetence at FEMA

The form used on the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to apply for aid won't work without Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher. (See http://www.fema.gov/register.shtm.)

If FEMA were an online merchant of, say, underwear, this wouldn't matter much. If this hypothetical merchant chose only to do business with customers running Windows, poor business choice - but not a big deal.

In the case of FEMA aid for those affected by Katrina it is more of an issue because telephone access to FEMA is problematic (if phones are available at all to those in need, the FEMA lines have been described as "quite congested").

There's no good reason that I know of to deny relief to people who might have access to a Mac or a Linux terminal (or, for whatever reason, are not running IE6).

This IT blunder is certainly not the biggest mistake that FEMA has made recently. But, as Jim Rapoza points out in a recent opinion piece in eWeek, there's no excuse for it either. As Repoza puts it, incompetence and laziness in this case "are causing those in great need to potentially go without aid."

To put this blunder in context, it would take me at most a few hours to write the FEMA form in a standards-compliant way so that it could be opened in any web browser.

It's also symptomatic of the culture of incompetent greedy cronyism foisted by the Bush administration on our country.

Department of Homeland Security Funds Cyber-Pork

According to a recent article in eWeek, the Department of Homeland Security has spent $1.7 Billion on what amounts to cyber-pork.

eWeek reporters Caron Carlson and Paul F. Roberts note that the $1.7 Billion has bought the following since 2003:

- Daily briefings about cyber-related activities called US-CERT
- The launch of a public-private group to coordinate government and private responses to an IT emergency as part of President Bush's "national strategy to secure cyberspace."
- Sponsorship of the Blue Cascades II and Purple Crescent II regional tabletop cyber-exercises (role-playing crisis management games). (Ironically, Purple Crescent II did model a hurricane in Lousiana, for all the good the exercise did!)
- A "cyber guidance" bulletin to help government agencies address infrastructure protection plans
- The creation of a government forum to address incident responses to IT security issues
- The launch of MSISAC - Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center - to promote cyber-secuirty awareness using conference calls and webcasts

Now, it seems to me that I could have done all this stuff for a couple of thousand dollars, not the billions that the Department of Homeland Security is spreading around as cyber-pork. But the real questions are:

- Who is all this money for nothing going to? (and whose cronies are they?)
- What could this money have bought if spent on our kids' educations?
- What business has the Department of Homeland Security with this nonsense when it can't deal with a disaster like Katrina?

A further observation: the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its governing directorate (as it calls itself) manages to be both sinister (invading many aspects of our lives) and almost comically inept and wasteful. As concerned citizens, it is up to us to keep an eye on what this gang of "more-equal pigs" is up to (with a nod of my cap to George Orwell's Animal Farm).

Support Single Payer Health Care for all in California

Support single payer health care for all in California via legislation introduced by State Senator Sheila Keuhl, SB 840 and SB921

Benefits include coverage for everyone and overall savings for California. Encourage making California a more equitable society and a better place to do business. It's time to stop the beaurocratic health insurance company rip off in the name of "competition."

Click here for politicians to contact in support of the legislation (see "What You Can Do").

Click here to donate money to the campaign supporting Health Care for All.

Here's the Health Care for All homepage, and here's the text of the legislation itself.

Stop Tiptoeing Around the Radical Right!

Microsoft recently bowed to pressure from a local church (the Antioch Bible Church) and its pastor Ken ("Hutch") Hutcherson to stop supporting local legislation that would have put a statute on the books forbidding anti-gay discrimination in Washington State. ("Hutch" is an ex pro-football player and powerful figure in politics in the Redmond, Washington area.)

In a company-wide email, CEO Steve Ballmer explained that he and Bill Gates supported the legislation personally. However, as one blogger quoted in the NY Times coverage put it, the company didn't want to offend the religious right.

Here's New York Times coverage of the affair. Microsoft's change of heart on the anti-gay discrimination legislation is not surprising considering the bloating and beaurocratization of the arterioslerotic Microsoft I blogged recently. This company wants to keep out of trouble.

Another somewhat humorous marker of the changing times was the "resignation" (or firing) of the head of PBS over the creation of an episode of the children's show Postcards from Buster. In the episode, Buster the bunny rabbit visits a lesbian couple. Here's an interview with the new PBS director, who would like to appeal to more conservative viewers.

It's high time to stop tiptoeing around the religious right. For starters, let's drop calling the Bush-Cheney gang "conservatives." They're not (a conservative doesn't want fast change). They're radicals, with an agenda of theocracy and more than a whiff of facism. Stop them before it is too late!

Why Our Health Care System Is Broken

Paul Krugman has a nice op-ed in today's New York Times which provides a simple explanation for why the United States has the most expensive and least successful healthcare system of all the developed nations.

It is that too many health care resources are wasted trying to shift costs onto other parties. This matches my experience, and the "other guy" is often you and me. As Krugman also points out, a side-effect of the system is that doctors have to spend lots of money on hiring staff to fight the insurance companies.

Let's stop this insanity and fix this broken, crazy system starting now!

It's Time to Scour the Shire!

In the final set piece in J.R.R. Tolkien's epic The Lord of the Rings, the four hobbits return to their beloved Shire to find it overrun by ruffians. (For some reason, the scouring of the shire was omitted from Peter Jackson's otherwise wonderful movie version of LOTR, which proceeds more or less directly from the defeat of ultimate evil and the coronation of the new king to Frodo's departure overseas with the Elves.)

The four hobbits are the protagonists of the epic novel. They are Frodo Baggins, Samwise ("Sam") Gamgee, Meriadoc ("Merry") Brandybuck, and Peregrin ("Pippin") Took. (I won't go into the question of class relationships between Sam and the other three, or the possibility of an erotic attachment between Sam and Frodo, as these are topics for another day.)

Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin return home to the once bucolic Shire. The Shire is the home to slothful, boring, stuck in their ways, but kind hobbits with surnames like Grubb, Chubb, Burrows, Hornblower, Bolger, Bracegirdle, Goodbody, Brockhouse, and Proudfoot. Hobbits like to eat, sleep, gently party, and smoke "pipe weed." Inside most hobbits, however fun loving and lazy the exterior, is an inner core of strength.

The four heros have returned home following their date with consumate evil. In the process, Frodo and Sam have destroyed the one ring, the ultimate embodiment of the ability of evil to corrupt (in the sense of Lord Acton's dictum, that power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.) The hobbits are not the same as when they left home on their great adventures; for better and for worse they have been changed by their experiences.

The Shire has changed, too, while they were gone. In some sense, the Shire of their carefree days is gone forever (at least for Frodo). The new Shire has been touched by evil. Trees and gardens are gone. Rivers are polluted and dying. Great red-brick factories belch stink and smoke all day long even though there is nothing for the factories to make. There are new ugly buildings, and lots of rules.

The ruffians who run the Shire are mean, petty, greedy, and self-righteous. These thugs have taken power in collaboration with a few rich hobbits. But the ruffians have forgotten the courage and core of steel that lies within ordinary hobbits. Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin raise the Shire, and assemble an army of the people. The thugs are easily thrown out of their country, and the natural order is restored.

J.R.R. Tolkien knew evil. He served in the trenches in the First World War (most of his friends died). He wrote the LOTR during the Second World War. The question for us: where in 1930s Germany timeline are we? Have we passed the point of no return?

It's time for us to scour the Shire! Let's get rid of these greedy, self-righteous, mean, theocratic, anti-constitutional thugs who are running our country. Awake! Awake! Fear, Fire, Foes! Awake!

Related link: House majority leader Tom DeLay says the judiciary has run amok (New York Times account)