Rumsfeld Sued Over Pentagon’s Recruiting Database

[kerrygoddess]

Rumsfeld Sued Over Pentagon’s Recruiting Database
April 24th, 2006 @ 4:24 pm

Let me just start this off by reiterating the call to FIRE Rumsfeld!

Reuters reports that “Six New York teen-agers filed a law suit against Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld today, alleging that “the U.S. Department of Defense broke the law by keeping an extensive database on potential recruits.”

The suit in federal court in Manhattan follows a series of allegations last year of misconduct by recruiters, who have experienced difficulty meeting targets because of the war in Iraq.

The Pentagon last year acknowledged it had created a database of 12 million Americans, full of personal data such as grades and Social Security numbers, to help find potential military recruits.

The Pentagon has defended the practice as critical to the success of the all-volunteer U.S. military, and said it was sensitive to privacy concerns.

But the suit alleges the Pentagon improperly collected data on people as young as 16 and kept it beyond a three-year limit, and said that the law does not allow for keeping records on race, ethnicity, gender or social security numbers.

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