Posted on 04/24/2006 4:49:08 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Six New York teen-agers sued Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld on Monday, alleging 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.
"On the one hand Congress has afforded broad latitude to collect information but on the other hand the Department of Defense has completely flouted those limits," said Donna Lieberman, director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, which filed the suit on behalf of the six plaintiffs.
The Pentagon referred the case to a spokeswoman who was not immediately available for comment.
Although the database was created in 2003, before the U.S. military started missing recruiting targets, the Pentagon first revealed the program in the federal register last year just has it was hit by other recruiting scandals.
The plaintiffs -- all 16- and 17-year-old students from the New York area -- were approached by military recruiters even after demanding that their information be stricken from the database, Lieberman said.
They want the court to declare the database illegal, force the military to stop keeping improper records and pay for their lawyers.
The suit names Rumsfeld; David Chu, the under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness, and Matt Boehmer, the Pentagon's director of advertising and market research studies.
"There's nothing sinister," Chu said when responding to criticism of the program last year.
There is a generation of liberal scum in this country, God knows how they were generated, but they should be put in uniform under a draft and bitchslapped into manhood like the rest of us were -- back when such a thing as respect and discipline existed. And patriotism.
Agreed.
And these are the people that want every gun owner
finger printed and bar coded?
Well, let's just do the Clinton thing - we can eliminate the information collected on these whiners by the Pentagon and, instead, turn the IRS on them and their families until they bleed.
"but they should be put in uniform under a draft and bitchslapped into manhood like the rest of us were"
Better you then me...
I take it these punks would be the first ones 'deleted' from the database. I had a security clearance in 1987, think I'll call the FBI and demand they 'delete' me too. ;-)
Often I wonder just what it would have been like, and how it would have turned out, if idiots like these had been around during WWII.
Thank God for the world that they weren't.
You beat me to it. This would also do wonders for the illegal alien problem - take immigration enforcement away from Homeland Security and give it to the IRS.
Let's not be too rosy about the past. We've had tons of problems in past wars with controversies about recruiting and the draft. Our controversies now are nothing by comparison.
Better you then me...
------
And in those days, this country was a FAR BETTER place with real Americans, real patriots, and not a deluge of crapweasel liberal cowards and slimeballs we have today.
Yes, a far better country then. Respectable.
This'll look real good in their college admissions materials. I expect at least one will be going to Harvard.
I bet everyone of these morons has a social security card, who do they think issued them those?
The Governemnt, and who does the Military work for? The Government.
Idiots.
"...by recruiters, who have experienced difficulty meeting targets because of the war in Iraq."
I don't think that's true.
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