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

Re:The FBI sits under a bridge waiting for goats?

[udderly]

It trolls for names

Argh. The editing at slashdot plumbs new depths of ineptitude.

It should of course be:

It trawls for names.

You know, I was going to say the same thing but I looked it up to be sure. I was surprised but, here's what I found:

troll1 (trol))
v. trolled, trolling, trolls
v. tr.

1. 1. To fish for by trailing a baited line from behind a slowly moving boat.
   2. To fish in by trailing a baited line: troll the lake for bass.
   3. To trail (a baited line) in fishing.
2. Slang.. To patrol (an area) in search for someone or something: " [Criminals] troll bus stations for young runaways" (Pete Axthelm).

"trolling." The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. 01 Sep. 2006. <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=trolling& x=0&y=0 >

Re:Transcript Reform?

[megaditto]

Then again, if I were named Ahmed Bin Laden, then I might feel differently about it.

No you would not; the bin Ladens (of Osama bin Laden) are one of the wealthiest families in Saudi Arabia. The 9/11 hijackers paid cash for their flight schools.

The absolute majority of foreign students are not eligible for FAFSA, and hence do not even file the applications. Monitoring FAFSA hence targets the long neglected domestic trailor-trash/ghetto terror threat.

Of course applying for FAFSA should not automatically give the Govt a probable cause since George W Bush clearly stated being poor does not make one a criminal by itself:
First, let me make it very clear, poor people aren't necessarily killers. Just because you happen to be not rich doesn't mean you're willing to kill.

Re:1000 Records is a really small number

[TopShelf]

From the article:

Mr. Miller said the Education Department had been asked to "run names of subjects already material to counterterrorism investigations" to look for evidence of student loan fraud or identity theft.

"No records of people other than those already under investigation were called for," he said. "This was not a sweeping program, in that it involved only a few hundred names. This is part of our mission, which is to take the leads we have and investigate them."

This wasn't trolling through student data at random, it was for specific names that were already part of an FBI investigation. That point is being entirely missed in the comments here. The FBI has a list of people they're investigating, and are asking the DoE to check if any of them are applying for financial aid anywhere. That sounds like basic police work to me. Perhaps it's newsworthy because it's surprising that two branches of the federal government can coordinate on anything.