Mark this in the "Scary as Hell" file.

...an audacious plan to target-market kids, as young as 16, for military solicitation.

-- so says Chris Jay Hoofnagle, West Coast director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center regarding the Pentagon's request that a private marketing firm create an extensive database of high school and college students to bolster recruitment and retention.

Check out the Washington Post's story here.

Essentially, via this giant database, military recruitment officials will be able to monitor not just personal information, but also things like grade point average, aptitude in various areas and subjects studied in school, allowing them to contact students (or potential "leads," as we call them in this lovely marketing industry) who may make a fantastic soldier, but have no intention of approaching a military branch on their own, perhaps out of sanity. Frightening.

The most frightening part of it all according to the Post's report?

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.

If I am reading that correctly, when a lead in the database becomes too old for active military recruitment (like, 23 years young), he or she is not removed. Instead, the information just moves to another part of the government, whether local, state or federal.

If you need me, I'll be cowering under my bed in fear.