A now infamous provision of the education bill No Child Left Behind required schools to provide private information like student addresses and phone numbers to military recruiters, or lose federal funding. Families could opt out of this provision -- but only if they knew about it. Now comes to light even more ominous and intrusive collection of student data by the Pentagon and its private contractors. Masquerading as test prep web sites or scholarship opportunities, sophisticated marketers stealthily collect data on teens and provide it to recruiters to help them target their recruiting messages.
Is the real purpose of public schools in America education, or is it warehousing same-age potential recruits to deliver them as a conveniently assembled audience for recruiting messages?
NASA will bomb the moon soon, ostensibly to stir up dust that can be tested for useful materials. But all NASA space exploration now has a dual purpose, civilian + military. Predator drones are unmanned weapon systems that burn up children in the Pashtun tribal regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan, but are controlled by men [...]
Who controls access to minors when it comes to recruiting them? Is it their parents, school administrators, or international law? International law forbids the recruitment of those under the age of 15, while the 1989 UN Child Convention defines a minor as under 18. Into that gap fall a million advertisements delivered by mass media. [...]
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
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