And you thought the Patriot Act went too far...

On the front page of today's Washington Post, there is a story about how the Pentagon is working with a private firm to collect personal information on high school students as young as 16 to find potential recruits.

The new database will include personal information including birth dates, Social Security numbers, e-mail addresses, grade-point averages, ethnicity and what subjects the students are studying.

One of the more disturbing parts of the story cites a provision of the No Child Left Behind Act that requires school systems to provide personal information on students to the Pentagon or risk losing federal funding. Also-

According to the Federal Register notice, the data will be open to "those who require the records in the performance of their official duties." It said the data would be protected by passwords.
The system also gives the Pentagon the right, without notifying citizens, to share the data for numerous uses outside the military, including with law enforcement, state tax authorities and Congress.

And a quote from a privacy expert:

"It's just typical of how voracious government is when it comes to personal information," said James W. Harper, a privacy expert with the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. "Defense is an area where government has a legitimate responsibility . . . but there are a lot of data fields they don't need and shouldn't be keeping. Ethnicity strikes me as particularly inappropriate."