The federal government has been “striking back” at potential terrorists by looking into student’s financial aid records.
Over the last five years, the FBI’s Project Strike Back has been giving names to the Federal Department of Education to be searched in Education’s database for financial aid, which holds any information provided by any student who has filled out Free Application for Federal Student Aid form. This data was then used to build data on suspected terrorists.
Between 2003 and 2004, 76 percent of college undergraduates received some sort of financial aid (loan or grant awards), according to the Department of Education and the National Center for Education Statistics.
Projections from Science and Engineering Indicators put the total number of undergraduate students in 2006 at just under 18 million nationwide.
While both the federal government and the Department of Education say the program came to a stop in June, both students and education observers were given pause by the program’s revelation.
“Why would they have a reason to use my information . I feel like the government should be required to have proof of something before they can take a student’s personal records,” said Adrienne Lalley, freshman biology major at Virginia Tech University.
“This (information) is troubling, but not surprising,” said Terry Hartle, American Council on Education senior vice president for government and public affairs. “It’s hard to be surprised when the government is mining every single database,” alluding to other government investigations such as the international banking consortium known as Swift.
During previous investigations, Education had assented to requests made by defense officials.
“It’s not unusual for the inspector general to cooperate with law enforcement on a number of investigations,” said Mary Mitchelson, general counsel to the Education Department’s inspector general, and “most of the program’s work occurred in the months after Sept. 11 (2001). To Hartle, however, the precautions do form part of a larger struggle against terrorism.

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