Uncle Sam Wants You: Identity Stripping of American Citizens

Investigative Reporting from Bush Watch

Uncle Sam Wants You: The Identity Stripping of American Citizens
Walter Brasch

As part of a $1.3 billion advertising campaign, the Department of Defense had awarded Mullen Advertising of Massachusetts a $345 million five-year contract; Mullen then subcontracted BeNOW, also a private Massachusetts company, to collect data and manage the database of names, birth dates, addresses, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, areas of study, grade point averages, height and weight data, ethnicity, social security numbers, and other personal data gleaned from dozens of sources. The Army claims the social security numbers are "carefully guarded." But, as innumerable cases over the past decade have shown, it isn't difficult for databases to be hacked, and for identities to be stolen. During 2004, there were 12 separate breaches of security into major databases, affecting almost 11 million individuals, according to Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

Hackers aren't the only ones who violate state and laws. The Pentagon's Joint Advertising, Market Research and Studies database itself is illegal. Buried within the Federal Register, the Army acknowledged in May 2005 it hadn't met a significant provision of the Federal Privacy Act that requires public hearings before the government may create databases. The Army claims its failure was merely "an oversight," and that the notice, three years after the database was created, was an attempt to meet the Act's requirements.

There is nothing in the creation and management of the database, which undoubtedly contains errors, to suggest it won't be shared with other governmental and law enforcement agencies. There is a long history of local, state, and federal governments illegally and often unconstitutionally collecting data on citizens.