War Is A Crime .org - Counter Recruitment

Military Recruiting in the United States, and Planning its Decline and Fall

davidswanson — Fri, 09 Dec 2016 19:24:14 +0000

This text is the foreword to a new book by Pat Elder called Military Recruiting in the United States.

Most people in the United States are far from aware of the full extent of military marketing, advertising, and recruitment efforts. We run into movies and comic books and video games and toys and school worksheets and science fairs and television shows and websites all the time that have been funded by and created in collaboration with the U.S. military. But we don’t know it. Or we know it, but we have so internalized the idea that the most expensive and extensive military the earth has ever known is simply normal, that we don’t think of its role in our educational and entertainment systems as in any way questionable. We don’t even think of the military’s marketing as being aimed at recruitment, much less ask each other whether that’s a good thing or being done in a proper way, or whether we ourselves should be forking over some $600 million a year just for the military’s advertising budget.

A Soldier's Life

davidswanson — Tue, 15 Nov 2016 14:26:55 +0000

U.S. Military Releases High School Testing Data

davidswanson — Thu, 04 Aug 2016 23:42:47 +0000

Popularity of enlistment test grows. Numbers of participating students and schools on the rise. Many required to take the exam while results are shared with recruiters without parental consent.

By Pat Elder

Data released by the Department of Defense on August 1st shows the military administered its 3-hour enlistment exam to nearly 700,000 students in 12,000 high schools during the 2013-14 school year, a 2% increase over the prior year.

The Military Entrance Processing Command (MEPCOM) administers the exam, known as the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, (ASVAB). The database was obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.

An examination of the data raises serious issues regarding student privacy and the integrity of the student testing program in America's schools. The three-hour test is the linchpin of the Pentagon's school-based recruiting program and provides MEPCOM an invaluable tool in prescreening candidates for military enlistment. Students are required to furnish detailed demographic information and their social security numbers before sitting for the exam.

Barbarism, civilization and modern politics: PTSD as a Political Football in a Hobbesian Age

dlindorff — Tue, 21 Jun 2016 13:54:49 +0000

By John Grant

If our wars were to make killers of all combat soldiers, rather than men who have killed, civilian life would be endangered for generations or, in fact, made impossible.

Student Privacy and the Military

davidswanson — Fri, 13 May 2016 16:09:38 +0000

By Pat Elder

Over the last two years, more than half of the states have enacted legislation aimed at protecting the privacy of high school students. A Student Privacy Pledge has attracted the support of 200 companies in the business of providing online services to students in America’s classrooms. The White House, too, has proposed a Student Digital Privacy Act, modeled after California’s stringent Student Online Personal Information Protection Act, (SOPIPA), that was passed in 2014 and went into effect in 2016.

Meanwhile, the military, the nation’s most egregious violator of student privacy rights, gets a pass.

Several elements are common to most of these laws, according to Jules Polonetsky and Brenda Leong of the Future of Privacy Forum. They summarize the new laws regulating school-based digital data collectors:

[Data collectors] are barred from selling student information, delivering targeted advertising to students, or changing privacy policies without notice and choice. They must use data for authorized educational uses only, support requirements for parental access to data, and delete data when required.

If a school promotes an online product and requires or encourages students to use it, then it has responsibility for making sure the tool complies with many of these new privacy laws.

Like yearbook and ring companies that sell student information to the highest bidder, DOD recruiters and civilian employees routinely pass sensitive information about underage students to the Joint Advertising and Marketing Research Systems (JAMRS), a DOD program. JAMRS subcontracts the massive, Orwellian database of approximately 30 million youth, ages 16-25, to the data goliath Equifax.

On a scale that dwarfs corporate competitors, the DOD delivers targeted advertising to students. It changes privacy policies without notice or choice to consumers. (The recent changes to USMEPCOM Regulation 601-4 concerning the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, ASVAB, provide an example.) The military does not use the data it collects for educational purposes, and it works against providing for parental consent or access to data. Furthermore, the military retains data collected on students long after laws demand their destruction.

While proposing the Student Digital Privacy Act last year, President Obama forcefully declared, “data collected on students in the classroom should only be used for educational purposes — to teach our children, not to market to our children.” However, the president’s proposal leaves the DOD alone.

The framework of the President’s proposal is taken from the California law:

Operators may not collect information that is descriptive of a student or otherwise identifies a student, including, but not limited to, information in the student’s educational record or email, first and last name, home address, telephone number, email address, or other information that allows physical or online contact. discipline records, test results, special education data, juvenile dependency records, grades, evaluations, criminal records, medical records, health records, social security number, biometric information, disabilities, socioeconomic information, food purchases, political affiliations, religious information, text messages, documents, student identifiers, search activity, photos, voice recordings, or geolocation information.

The DOD collects most of this through the ASVAB enlistment test alone. More than a thousand schools require students to take the test. Overall, 650,000 high school kids take the test in 12,000 schools.

Minnesota, New Jersey, Colorado, New Mexico,and Mississippi, allow students to take the ASVAB as an alternative end-of-year assessment. Kentucky and Missouri encourage students to take the ASVAB to be considered “Career Ready.” These policies provide a treasure trove of unregulated data for the Pentagon, all without parental consent. On the other end of the spectrum, Hawaii, Maryland, and New Hampshire do not allow results from the ASVAB to be used for recruiting purposes.

Federal law says military recruiters may request the names, addresses, and numbers of students for direct marketing purposes, an act prohibited in all the new privacy laws. The law, however, allows parents to request that their child’s name not be forwarded to the Pentagon. Maryland is the only state that has a law requiring an “opt-out” form to be placed on the mandatory emergency contact card, leading most parents to remove their child’s information from lists being sent to recruiters. The new data privacy laws fail to address this obvious invasion of privacy in the 49 states that are reluctant to check this military overreach.

The military has multiple avenues of data flowing into its databases. High school guidance offices and career centers encourage students to visit the websites of each of the military branches, reserves, and Guard units. They all collect volumes of personally identifiable data. Schools also promote the following websites, and they often provide instruction in navigating a host of military or military-supported sites like: www.todaysmilitary.com, www.ecybermission.com,www.march2success.com, www.armystrongstories.com,www.military.com,www.asvabprogram.com,www.march2success.com, and www.myfuture.com.

Unwary students are prompted to click on military links to Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter where newly formed units of recruiters in recruiting companies across the country spend countless hours trolling these sources to assemble a virtual portrait of children before first contact.

The DOD also works in state houses to loosen privacy protections. Kentucky is the worst. Their law says, “All student academic records are made available upon request to any agency of the federal or state government for the purpose of determining a student's eligibility for military service.”

When President Obama endorsed the Student Privacy Pledge, he called for companies to make a firm commitment to using student data only for educational purposes. The Student Privacy Pledge asks data collectors to abide voluntarily by the same standards taken from many the new state laws

“We pioneered the Internet,” Obama said at the Federal Trade Commission. “But we also pioneered the Bill of Rights and a sense each of us as individuals have a sphere of privacy around us that should not be breached by our government but also by commercial interests.” The DoD has not signed the pledge and is not likely to do so on anytime soon because so much of the Pentagon’s strategy for recruiting the nation’s youth depends on deception.

The Pledge applies to all personal student information whether or not it is part of an “educational record” as defined by federal law. It is an important distinction because the DOD has claimed for years that the administration of the ASVAB in the schools is not subject to the Buckley Amendment, so results do not need parental consent to be released to recruiters. The Buckley Amendment says schools may not release educational records to third parties without seeking parental consent. The DOD claims ASVAB results are not educational records. Instead, they say test results are military records. The DOD has a long and despicable history of dodging privacy mandates.

Meanwhile, other giants in the student testing industry, like the College Board and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, have signed on.

When the ACLU settled their lawsuit with the DOD over the illegal JAMRS database in 2007, the DOD agreed to the following:

· limit to three years the length of time that DoD retains student information;

· stop collecting student Social Security Numbers; and,

· establish and clarify procedures by which students can block the military from entering information about them in the database and have their information removed.

The DOD has fallen short on all three accounts. Student information is retained indefinitely, although JAMRS data is placed in a “suppression file” after three years. The Recruiting Command routinely collects social security numbers through the ASVAB program and the DOD has failed to make anything clear to students or their parents regarding the JAMRS database or ways to have information removed.

This is not what democracy looks like. The DOD defends its actions arguing that this heavy-handed arrangement is preferable to the return of the draft, although the problem is much deeper.

Relatively few want to enlist and those that do increasingly come from a shrinking number of deep red states in the south. The realities of a vicious and unresponsive command structure after 15 years of unnecessary warfare have filtered down to potential recruits and their families. The Pentagon feels it must violate our 1^st Amendment rights while operating a highly deceptive recruiting apparatus to achieve its yearly quotas. What’s needed is a sincere national discussion on the size, cost, and mission of the Department of Defense, particularly as it relates to the inability of this nation to address the overwhelming needs of its citizenry. We may discover we don’t need all of these troops and that reduced recruiting quotas will engender a more democratic and transparent defense establishment.

========

Pat Elder pelder@studentprivacy.org is the Director of the National Coalition to Protect Student Privacy. The organization works to expose the military’s unconstitutional and deceptive recruiting practices in the nation’s high schools. www.studentprivacy.org

Talk Nation Radio: Seth Kershner on the Campaign to Demilitarize U.S. Schools

davidswanson — Tue, 08 Mar 2016 15:28:44 +0000

https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/talk-nation-radio-seth-kershner-on-the-campaign-to-demilitarize-us-schools

Seth Kershner is a writer and researcher whose work has appeared in such outlets as In These Times, Sojourners, and Rethinking Schools. He is the co-author (with Scott Harding) of Counter-Recruitment and the Campaign to Demilitarize Public Schools (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). This is the first book to analyze the grassroots counter-recruitment movement which has been around for more than four decades. He has recently been using the Freedom of Information Act to gain a better understanding of the extent of militarism in U.S. schools, obtaining hundreds of pages of documents in the process. Last fall he and Scott Harding shared some of these findings in an op-ed for Education Week.

Total run time: 29:00

Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Music by Duke Ellington.

Download from LetsTryDemocracy or Archive.

Pacifica stations can also download from Audioport.

Syndicated by Pacifica Network.

Please encourage your local radio stations to carry this program every week!

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Past Talk Nation Radio shows are all available free and complete at
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Bring Pink Mist to Army Recruitment Offices

davidswanson — Wed, 02 Mar 2016 04:27:25 +0000

Bring spray bottles of pink liquid to military recruitment offices and displays.
Spray them.
Tell potential recruits: Be all that you can be. And this could be you.

“Pink mist. That’s what they call it.
“When one of your mates hasn’t just bought it,
“but goes in a flash, from being there to not.
“A direct hit. An I.E.D. An R.P.G. stuck in the gut.”

Those are lines from a play called Pink Mist written in verse by Owen Sheers about three young lads from Bristol who sign up for war in Afghanistan.
Read it. Perform it. It begins like this:

“Three boys went to Catterick.
“It was January,
“snow pitchen on the Severn,
“turning the brown mud white,
“fishermen blowing on their fingerless gloves,
“the current pulling their fishing lines tight.
“That’s how it was the morning when
“the three of us did what boys always have
“And left our homes for war.”

It’s a lie, of course. Boys haven’t always. Most boys don’t now in the most war mad nations on earth. And boys in many nations don’t at all. And that has always been so, especially before there were nations.

The boys are recruited by more lies:

“I wanted something else — him.
“The man looking back at me,
“the one with the uniform, the gun.
“The one going somewhere, getting something done.”

What about staying somewhere and getting something done? What about going somewhere and getting something other than killing people done?

They joined also for pay and a better future, the chance to support a family. A society in which you cannot support a family without signing up to go and kill people in a distant land is clearly the least civilized sort of society imaginable, and yet it motivates itself to kill those people in large part from its sense of superiority.

They joined for the same reason some people join the groups Westerners go off to fight against: nobody respected them until a recruiter did.

Off at war in Afghanistan, the first time one of their buddies is killed, they become motivated by revenge:
“It wasn’t just doing a job any more.
“It was about killing them.”

Think about a culture in which killing large numbers of people you know nothing about, people who barely even show up in your antiwar plays based on the remembrances of your troops, is “just a job.” It’s society-wide sociopathy. The boys in this book speak of the pride of doing the “job you trained for.” They also speak of it as a game, as the realization of their childhood playing at war.

These three end up, respectively, dead, legless, and traumatized. Their horrors are the story. Their victims, the people of Afghanistan, barely register, and never achieve the level of names or speaking roles. That they are being killed is clear, but they are only specified at all in one incident that involves killing a man, his wife, and a two-year-old girl.

Of course the pain that war brings to the aggressors and their loved ones back home is more than enough to end this monstrosity called war. The stupidity of friendly-fire deaths is prominent in the play. The notion of any higher purpose or of any purpose at all for the war is missing.

One of the soldiers hopes for an end to war:
“and well, I guess I hope it’ll change, somehow.
“Till then, if people knew what it is,
“that would be enough.
“How the loss becomes the reason,
“and how the reason’s an abuse of love.”

It is time to abolish draft registration and restore full rights to people of conscience.

davidswanson — Wed, 24 Feb 2016 15:03:38 +0000

By Bill Galvin and Maria Santelli, Center on Conscience & War[1]

With the combat restriction for women in the US Armed Forces now lifted, discussion of draft registration is back in the news, the courts, and the halls of congress. But the problems with Selective Service System (SSS) Registration go much deeper than gender equality. There is little political interest in bringing back the draft. Yet draft registration remains a burden upon our nation’s young men – and now, potentially our young women, as well.

The extrajudicial penalties imposed upon those who choose not to or fail to register make life more difficult for many who already are marginalized, and they particularly target conscientious objectors who believe that registering with Selective Service is a form of participating in war. There is no opportunity to register as a conscientious objector. Legal protection for conscientious objectors was provided in the constitutions of several of the original colonies,[2] and was written into early drafts of what became the First and Second Amendments to the Bill of Rights of the US Constitution.[3] Instead of honoring and upholding these freedoms and protections, modern lawmakers have subjected non-registrants to laws that deny education, employment and other fundamental opportunities. These laws amount to an unacceptable burden on those individuals who cannot, in good conscience, register, and in fact serve to punish and marginalize those who are living their lives true to the very essence of our democracy.

After the war in Vietnam ended in 1975, draft registration ended as well. In 1980 President Carter reinstated registration to send a message to the Soviet Union, which had just invaded Afghanistan, that the US could be ready for war at any time. This is still the law of the land today: virtually all males residing in the US and all male citizens between the ages of 18 and 26 are required to be registered with Selective Service.

The penalties for failure to register are potentially quite severe: it is a federal felony carrying a penalty of up to 5 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.[4] Since 1980 millions of young men have violated the law by failing to register. And of those who did register, millions more violated the law by failing to register during the time period prescribed in the law.[5] Since 1980 a grand total of just 20 people have been prosecuted for failure to register. (The last indictment was on January 23rd, 1986.) Almost all of those prosecuted were conscientious objectors who publicly asserted their non-registration as a religious, conscientious or political statement.[6]

Initially, the government planned to prosecute a handful of public resisters and scare everyone else into complying with the registration requirement. (In criminology, this enforcement strategy is called “general deterrence.”) The plan backfired: conscientious objectors facing prosecution were on the evening news talking about their values, asserting that they were answering to a higher moral law, and non-compliance with registration actually increased.

In response, beginning in 1982, the federal government enacted punitive legislation and policies designed to coerce people to register with Selective Service. These laws, commonly called “Solomon” laws after the member of Congress who first introduced them (not because of their supposed wisdom!), mandated non-registrants be denied the following:

Federal financial aid to college students;
Federal job training;
Employment with federal executive agencies;
S. Citizenship to immigrants.

Selective Service has stated consistently that their goal is to increase registration rates, not prosecute non-registrants. They happily accept late registrations until one turns 26, after which time it is no longer legally or administratively possible to register. Because there is a five-year statute of limitations for violations of the Selective Service law, once a non-registrant turns 31 he[7] can no longer be prosecuted, yet the denial of federal financial aid, job training, and employment extends throughout his life.

Selective Service has testified before Congress that there is nothing to gain by denying these benefits to those who are too old to be registered.[8] Yet, in a convoluted circular argument, government officials have asserted that getting someone to register is doing that person a favor, because failure to register makes them ineligible for these government “benefits.” In fact, it was that attitude that caused the former director of Selective Service Gil Coronado to observe,

“If we are not successful in reminding men in the inner cities about their registration obligation, especially minority and immigrant men, they will miss out on opportunities to achieve the American dream. They will lose eligibility for college loans and grants, government jobs, job training and for registration-age immigrants, citizenship. Unless we are successful in achieving high registration compliance, America may be on the verge of creating a permanent underclass.”[9]

Rather than work to eliminate these extrajudicial penalties for non-registrants, and really level the playing field for all, Selective Service has encouraged states to adopt additional penalties for those who do not register for the draft. According to the 2015 SSS Annual Report to Congress, more than two-thirds of the men registered in FY 2015 were coerced by measures such as driver’s license restrictions or access to financial aid.[10]

In the years since the federal government implemented Solomon-style penalties, 44 states, the District of Columbia, and several territories have enacted legislation that encourages or coerces registration with Selective Service. These laws take myriad forms: some states refuse government financial aid to unregistered students; some refuse enrollment in state institutions; some of those who do not register pay out-of-state tuition; and some states levy a combination of these penalties. Bills that restrict employment with state governments have passed in 20 states and one territory.

Laws linking registration to a driver’s license, learner’s permit, or photo ID vary by state, from requiring registration in order to be eligible to receive an ID or license, which is the position taken by most states, to simply providing the opportunity for one to register. The only states that have not currently passed any state legislation regarding registration with Selective Service are Nebraska, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and Wyoming.

Any violation of the law carries a potential penalty if one is convicted. Yet – and it is worth repeating — the government has prosecuted no one for violating Selective Service law since 1986, while hundreds of thousands of US citizens have been penalized since that time.[11] This practice of penalization without prosecution or conviction subverts the system of law established by our Constitution. Furthermore, penalizing people in ways that are unrelated to their alleged offense – an offense for which they have not been charged – runs counter to our fundamental system of law and our notion of justice. If there is a political will to enforce a law, violators should be prosecuted and have the right to be judged by a jury of their peers. If there is no political will to enforce a law, the law should be rescinded.

However, rather than rescind this unpopular and burdensome law, recent political and media attention has been focused on extending it to women. On February 2, 2016 the Chief of Staff of the Army and the Commandant of the Marine Corps both testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee in support of extending the registration requirement to women. Two days later, Representative Duncan Hunter (R-CA) and Representative Ryan Zinke (R-MT) introduced the Draft America’s Daughters Act, which, if passed, would extend the registration requirement to women. It also would subject women, and disproportionately women of conscience, to potential criminal prosecution, as well as life-long extrajudicial punishment for their act of conscience.

Back in 1981, when the single-gender Selective Service registration was challenged as sex discrimination, the Supreme Court ruled that a male-only Selective Service registration was legal. They said, “[S]ince women are excluded from combat service,” they are “simply not similarly situated for purposes of a draft or registration for a draft,” and Congress, having constitutional authority to “raise and maintain” the military, had the authority to consider “military need” over “equity.”[12]

But times have changed, and women are now at last recognized as “similarly situated.” Now that women are no longer barred from combat, the reason the Court allowed a male-only registration system no longer exists. Several court cases in recent years have challenged the male-only draft on constitutional “equal protection” grounds, and one of those cases was argued before the 9^th Circuit Federal Court of Appeals on December 8, 2015. On February 19, 2016, the court of appeals rejected the lower court’s technical reasons for dismissing the case and sent it back for further consideration.

But adding women to the population punished by the legal and constitutional oversteps of the Selective Service System solves nothing.

With current federal and state Selective Service laws in place, if a man wants to go back to school later in life or seeks employment with federal or state government agencies, he may well find those opportunities blocked because he did not register. Without a photo ID or driver’s license, the rights of individuals of conscience to travel are restricted. A photo ID is usually required to purchase an airline or train ticket, or tickets for travel on other modes of transportation even inside the US. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 13.1 states, “everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.”[13] The effect of these laws is to undermine this basic human right. Furthermore, if so-called Voter ID requirements continue to spread and are upheld by the courts, these laws may restrict the right of conscientious objectors to a fundamental democratic means of expression: the vote.

Few would argue that the legislators behind these punitive laws are knowingly and purposefully looking to harm or disenfranchise certain groups, but that is no less the effect of their actions. The time is ripe to challenge these laws – not add women of conscience (or any other women) to the group being punished. The time is also ripe to challenge the Selective Service System itself, and on February 10, Representative Mike Coffman (R-CO), along with Representatives Peter DeFazio (D-OR), Jared Polis (D-CO) and Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) introduced a bill that would achieve both. H.R. 4523 would repeal the Military Selective Service Act, abolishing the registration requirement for everyone, while requiring that “a person may not be denied a right, privilege, benefit, or employment position under Federal law” for having refused or failed to register before the repeal. A petition is now circulating to support this sensible and timely effort.

Despite the spin that trivializes registration (“It’s quick, it’s easy, it’s the law;” It’s just registration, it’s not a draft), these discussions serve as a renewed reminder that, as the Supreme Court said back in 1981, “the purpose of registration is to develop a pool of potential combat troops.” The purpose of registration is to prepare for war. Our daughters and our sons deserve better.

[1] The Center on Conscience & War (CCW) was founded in 1940 to protect the rights of Conscientious Objectors. Our work continues today, providing technical and community support to all those who oppose their participation in war or the preparation for war.

[2] Lillian Schlissel, Conscience in America (New York: Dutton, 1968) p. 28

[3] Ibid, p. 47. Here Schlissel is citing James Madison, Proposals to the Congress for a Bill of Rights, Annals of Congress: The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States, Vol. I, First Congress, First Session, June 1789 (Washington DC: Gales and Seaton, 1834). See also Harrop A. Freeman, “A Remonstrance for Conscience,” Univ. Penn. Law Rev., vol. 106, no. 6, pp. 806-830, at 811-812 (April 1958) (reciting the drafting history in detail).

[4] 50 U.S.C. App. 462(a) and 18 U.S.C. 3571(b)(3)

[5] Selective Service System Annual Reports to Congress, 1981-2011

[6] http://hasbrouck.org/draft/prosecutions.html

[7] We use the pronoun “he” because the law only affects males at this time.

[8] Richard Flahavan, Selective Service System Associate Director, Public and Intergovernmental Affairs, in a meeting between Selective Service and the staff of the Center on Conscience & War, Nov 27, 2012

[9] FY 1999 Annual Report to the Congress of the United States, from the Director of Selective Service, p.8.

[10] https://www.sss.gov/Portals/0/PDFs/Annual%20Report%202015%20-%20Final.pdf

[11] ibid.

[12] Rostker v. Goldberg, 453 U.S. 57 (1981).

[13] Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml

ASVAB Game Changer

davidswanson — Tue, 23 Feb 2016 17:44:08 +0000

Military re-writes regulations to control damage and create new recruiting opportunities

The recent changes made by the US Military Entrance Processing Command to Regulation 601-4, Personnel Procurement Student Testing Program, are very significant to the work many of us have been carrying on for years. Although the DOD’s Student Testing Program is complicated and understood by small numbers of activists, it represents a massive and egregious violation of civil liberties.

At first glance it seemed our activism had resulted in a victory, but upon closer examination, it’s apparent the military is adjusting its strategy to a changing landscape for greater advantage.

The Pentagon runs the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery Career Exploration Program (ASVAB-CEP) in 14,000 high schools across the country. The recruiting command is able to give its 3-hour enlistment test to 650,000 kids every year by deceptively shrouding it within a “Career Exploration Program”, which they say helps kids figure out what they want to do when they grow up. Actually, recruiters capture data on the cognitive abilities of the kids, along with their social security numbers and detailed demographic information. The primary purpose of the ASVAB-CEP, according the military regulations, is to create leads for recruiters.

Until now, school officials were expected to be proactive in communicating to the Recruiting Command whether they wanted to make the test results available to be used for recruiting purposes. Guidance counselors were to select one of eight release options for their kids taking the test. See Table 3-1:

Table 3-1
Recruiter Release Options - Instructions for providing access to student test information to recruiting services

1 Provide student test information to recruiting services no sooner than 7 days after mailed to School
2 Provide student test information to recruiting services no sooner than 60 days after mailed to School
3 Provide student test information to recruiting services no sooner than 90 days after mailed to School
4 Provide student test information to recruiting services no sooner than 120 days after mailed to School
5 Provide student test information to recruiting services no sooner than the end of the SY for that specific school
6 Provide student test information to recruiting services no sooner than 7 days after mailed to school with instruction that no telephone solicitation by recruiters will be conducted as a result of test information provided
7 Invalid test results. Student test information is not provided to recruiting services
8 Access to student test information is not provided to recruiting services

Options 1-6 basically say the same thing. Recruiters get the data. Option 7 is rarely used; it’s for when there’s some sort of goof up. Option 8 says the military cannot use test results for recruiting purposes.

Eight years ago approximately 1-2% of the kids taking the test had Option 8 selected. Since then, the percent has risen to 15% with three entire states and 2,000 schools moving to select Option 8. Most schools, school boards, and state legislatures across the country were unaware that release options existed until we told them. Option 1 was made the default selection if a guidance counselor failed to contact the Military Entrance Processing Station (MEPS) to express the school’s desire to select a particular option. We don’t have any data for the last 2 years but we think there may be significant movement in our favor across the country. We filed a FOIA request that is taking forever to receive. Rep Hoyer (D-MD) has recently contacted the DOD on our behalf.

Here’s the recent change to Section 3-2 on Release Options,
Only a school official will select the recruiter release option for their students. If an option isn’t selected, the MEPS must contact the school to determine the release option. If no option is received from the school, the test will be scored using Option 8 (no release). Release options are provided in Table 3-1 (Recruiter release options). The release option chosen by the school will be honored without discrimination and without adverse effect of quality or priority of service to the school. All MEPS scheduling communications with schools will include a listing of all release options.

At first blush this seems like a victory for us, however, after deeper analysis and dialogue, it’s apparent the recruiting command has launched into a damage control mode by creating new opportunities for itself. “If no option is provided by the school the test will be scored using Option 8” actually sounds like the military took a progressive step forward, but the second part about scheduling communications with schools, including a listing of all release options, suggests the command is going after all those Option 8 schools to get them to switch to Options 1-6. If MEPS representatives can’t talk a school into moving from Option 8, they may suggest the school allow for a split option. That means some of the kids will be allowed to take the ASVAB under Option 8 and some under Options 1-6.

An example of this strategy may be found in the recent change to Chancellor’s Regulation A-825 in New York City. For years, the city’s schools had selected Option 8 for its students who took the ASVAB. If a student wanted to use her scores for enlistment purposes, she was required to visit with a recruiter to sign a form. (or her parents if she’s under 18)
Now, schools in the city where the military gives the ASVAB are required to send home written notification in advance of the test to the parents of each student scheduled to take the ASVAB. The form asks parents if it’s OK to release results to recruiters.

Counselors across the country are already overwhelmed with their workload and this new military regulation will add to it. Counseling staff will be required to keep track of the notifications and sort students accordingly. Counselors will be subject to blame and litigation we hope to engender if results are forwarded to recruiting services from a child whose parents did not authorize consent.

The recruiting command has launched into damage control by creating new opportunities for itself. We must do the same. We have our work cut out for us. We need to communicate with 14,000 schools to let them know they'll be contacted by recruiters who will sell them on selecting Option 1-6. We must convince them to protect the privacy of their students by selecting Release Option 8.

Pat Elder is the Director of the National Coalition to Protect Student Privacy www.studentprivacy.org

Future of Draft for Men and Women Goes to Court and Congress

davidswanson — Sat, 20 Feb 2016 17:23:29 +0000

By Edward Hasbrouck

On Friday the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the decision of the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles that had dismissed the complaint in National Coalition for Men v. Selective Service System.

The Court of Appeals reinstated the complaint, and remanded the case to the U.S. District Court for consideration of the other issues in the case.

The next procedural step could be more written briefing on these issues, or a written scheduling order form the District Court, or an in-person or telephone “status conference” in Los Angeles, any of which could occur in a couple of weeks to a couple of months.

The most likely outcome of this and some other similar (although less far advanced) pending lawsuits is a court ruling that male-only draft registration in unconstitutional. Such a ruling would end draft registration, unless Congress changes the law.

The decision reinstating this case is likely to produce more pressure on Congress to take up the issue of draft registration sooner. Both major parties are internally divided on draft registration: it’s a “wedge issue” already within each party as well as potentially between the parties.

Bills to extend draft registration to women have been introduced by both Democrats (H.R. 1509) and Republicans (H.R. 4478), and questions about whether women should be required to register have been asked in both Democratic and Republican Presidential primary debates.

Some Republican candidates have said that draft registration should be extended to women, others that it should be retained for men only. As a member of the House in 1994, Bernie Sanders voted to end draft registration. But so far as I have been able to determine, neither Bernie Sanders nor Hillary Clinton has said what they would do about draft registration, or propose that Congress do, if they are elected.

H.R. 4523, a bill to end draft registration entirely, abolish the Selective Service System, and repeal the Federal “Solomon Amendments” linking draft registration to Federal student aid, job training, and other programs has also been introduced in the House by a bipartisan group of sponsors. So far as I know, no Presidential candidate from either major party has endorsed H.R. 4523 or said that they would support ending draft registration. But this bill represents the best chance in more than 20 years to end draft registration and abolish the Selective Service System.

Please support H.R. 4523 to end draft registration and abolish the Selective Service System. Please also support continued resistance to draft registration, by men and women, as long as it remains the law.

Opinion by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals:
http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/memoranda/2016/02/19/13-56690.pdf

Press release from the National Coalition for Men:
http://ncfm.org/2016/02/action/ncfm-wins-ninth-circuit-selective-service-appeal/

Details of H.R. 4523:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/4523

Petition in support of H.R. 4523:
http://diy.rootsaction.org/petitions/pass-the-new-bill-to-abolish-the-military-draft

Background:
https://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/002204.html
http://www.resisters.info/#women