Signing up for military service, serving your country, being a part of something bigger than yourself? Very good.
The military secretly using teenagers' phones to drive up recruitment numbers? Uhhrrr, maybe not so much.
The Georgia Army National Guard plans to combine two deeply controversial practices — military recruiting at schools and location-based phone surveillance — to persuade teens to enlist, according to contract documents reviewed by The Intercept.
"Location-based phone surveillance" is about as unpleasant as it sounds. The Guard will be putting up "geofences" at more than five dozen high schools around the state, after which they will target phones within that perimeter "with the intent of generating qualified leads of potential applicants for enlistment while also raising awareness of the Georgia Army National Guard."
To be perfectly honest I am amazed that sort of thing is legal. It sounds very much like a low-grade surveillance state. I guess phone data is somehow public property in some weird, incomprehensible sort of way? Even when it concerns high school students?
In any event, the Guard is plainly pulling out all the stops here:
The ad campaign will make use of a variety of surveillance advertising techniques, including capturing the unique device IDs of student phones, tracking pixels, and IP address tracking.
The IT guys at the Georgia Guard are gonna be working overtime on this one.
"Parents or centers of influence (i.e. coaches, school counselors, etc.)" are also expected to be targets of the campaign.
