FBI Data Mining Students' Financial Aid Records

crumley writes "The U.S. Department of Education has been running a program that data mines student financial aid records for the FBI. The program, now five years old, is known as Project Strike Back. It trolls for names of suspected terrorists through the Education Department's database of information, which is derived from students who fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). The discovery of this program by Northwestern University journalism student Laura McGann has added fuel to the debate about the Education Department's proposal to start a new database tracking the academic progress of all students."

Comments

Transcript Reform?

[patrixmyth]

If this means I no longer have to submit my 12 transcripts for every educational and career application, then I'm all for it. Then again, if I were named Ahmed Bin Laden, then I might feel differently about it. (Oh, and I for one, welcome our Dept. of Education Overlords!)

Re:1000 Records is a really small number

[Chosen Reject]

I just hope that while they are at it they can go ahead and renew my FAFSA for this year.

Devil's Advocate continued...

[neonprimetime]

...but how would Slashdot investigate terrorism?


- A requestor (government official, etc.) submits a request for a query on a specific database.
- The group gathering this data must be completely unbiased, preferably a group of people outsourced from another country
- This outside group is allowed to modify the requestors query as to remove any prejudice from it.
- Each person submitting their data must first be given an opt out choice as to be exluded from the data mining.
- Each record must be accumulated, counted, and summarized by 2 people, of different races, in order to assure impartiality
- Once a final list of supspected guilty records is created, any person on that list that is frequently stereotyped should also be removed.
- The final list of guilty records should be written in permanent ink and returned to the requestor, in order to ensure the records are not modified.

Re:We should be tracking our government.

[megaditto]

So you do not like the program that is supposed to protect you from terrorists. Would rather have Clinton and Saddam back in power?

Why do you hate America so much?

Sounds sort of like the "no-fly" list

[MLease]

And we all know how well that is working!

-Mike