The Department of Education has recently disclosed the conduction of a secret activity that involved the use of student financial records. Project Strike Back, a program that had been going on for the past five years up until this past June when it was discontinued, aimed at searching through student financial aid records-namely student’s FAFSA applications, to pinpoint targets for terrorist activity.
Initiated after the events of September 11th as a collaboration between the Department of Education and the FBI, the project meant to use these databases to investigate the records of a number of individuals that were linked to terrorism. The project was created after the FBI learned that terrorists had manipulated some programs that involved student financial aid records.
In effect of this project, the FBI had access to the financial databases – including social security numbers, tax returns, investment and other family information – of about 14 million college students.
This new discovery has led people to question their right to privacy in submitting this highly revealing and personal information. One thing to be especially hesitant about is if this information could be transferred from one agency to another for other purposes.
“It seems that the government has put a lot of effort into a program that violates people’s privacy. Though we are expected to trust the government, when they do something like this, it leaves you to question how far our right to privacy really extends,” says Sarah Alecozay ’09.
“I think it’s okay,” says Jenn Trudeau ’09. “It’s as if we are cooperating with the government, and if they have reasonable evidence, then it’s okay for them to be searching through our FAFSAs, making the information they need more accessible.”
“In a way it’s for our security, but in another way, it tests our privacy. A lot of rules are broken, and if the government really needs this information to keep us secure, then it’s okay since we really have nothing to hide,” said Maria Gonzalez ’09 and Tom Vitlo ’09.
The project was discontinued last June because it involved as little as 50 hours of work, where only hundreds out of the millions of files were searched. Furthermore, no FBI cases have been reported thereafter that affirm whether the project was even successful.
Though Project Strike Back has been terminated, citizens’ personal freedom to privacy has been encroached upon, enough so that their opinion and authorization seemingly did not matter in creating the program. Whether this discovered information will be relayed through agencies and misused is yet to be determined, but these issues, undoubtedly, will most likely continue to raise questions on such American ideals as privacy and personal identity.
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