[Infowarrior] - Education Dept. Shared Student Data With F.B.I.

[Richard Forno]

Education Dept. Shared Student Data With F.B.I.
By JONATHAN D. GLATER
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/01/washington/01educ.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&re
f=us&pagewanted=print

The Federal Education Department shared personal information on hundreds of
student loan applicants with the Federal Bureau of Investigation across a
five-year period that began after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, the agencies
said yesterday.

Under the program, called Project Strikeback, the Education Department
received names from the F.B.I. and checked them against its student aid
database, forwarding information. Each year, the Education Department
collects information from 14 million applications for federal student aid.

Neither agency would say whether any investigations resulted. The agencies
said the program had been closed. The effort was reported yesterday by a
graduate student, Laura McGann, at the Medill School of Journalism at
Northwestern University, as part of a reporting project that focused on
national security and civil liberties.

In a statement, Mary Mitchelson, counsel to the inspector general of the
Education Department, said, ³Using names provided by the bureau, we examined
the Department of Education¹s student financial aid databases to determine
if the individuals received or applied for federal student financial
assistance.²

Information collected on federal financial aid applications includes names,
addresses, Social Security numbers, incomes and, for some students,
information on parents¹ incomes and educational backgrounds.

Generally, only United States citizens and permanent residents are eligible
to apply for federal student financial aid.

An assistant director of the F.B.I., John Miller, said in a statement:
³During the 9/11 investigation and continually since, much of the
intelligence has indicated terrorists have exploited programs involving
student visas and financial aid. In some student loan frauds, identity theft
has been a factor.¹¹

Mr. Miller said the Education Department was asked to ³run names of subjects
already material to counterterrorism investigations² to look for evidence of
student loan fraud or identity theft.

³No records of people other than those already under investigation were
called for,² he said. ³This 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.²

Mr. Miller said that the effort was not concealed and that it was referred
to publicly in briefings to Congress and the Government Accountability
Office.

A spokeswoman for the bureau, Cathy Milhoan, said the Education Department
had provided financial aid information on fewer than 1,000 names in
connection with terrorism investigations.

The information sharing was disclosed as the Education Department examines a
proposal by the Commission on the Future of Higher Education, established
last year by Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, to create a national
student database that would follow individual students¹ progress as a way of
holding colleges accountable for students¹ success.

³This operation Strikeback confirms our worst fears about the uses to which
these databases can be put,² said David L. Warren, president of the National
Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, which represents 900
institutions. ³The concentration of all this data absolutely invites use by
other agencies of data that had been gathered for very specific and narrow
purposes, namely the granting of student aid to needy kids.²

The Federal Bureau of Investigation would not discuss the specific criteria
it used in seeking information on students but said the program was narrowly
focused.

³People are trying to turn this into something that it wasn¹t,² Ms. Milhoan
said. ³We are not out there arbitrarily running student records for the sake
of running them.²

Ms. Mitchelson of the Education Department said a review of the files of the
people named by the F.B.I. had not led to any cases that charged student
loan fraud.

Ms. Mitchelson said the information sharing was possible under a law that
permits a federal agency to release personal information to another agency
³for a civil or criminal law enforcement activity.²

She said the department had spent fewer than 600 hours on the program,
including 50 hours over the last four years.

Ms. McGann, the journalism student who reported on the program, said she saw
data sharing mentioned, but not described, in a report by the Government
Accountability Office that she reviewed in the spring as part of a research
project after a seminar on investigative reporting.

³I thought that was pretty unexpected for the Department of Education,² said
Ms. McGann, 24, who graduated this year from Medill. ³So I decided I would
try to look into that a little more.²

She said she found another mention of the program in a report from the
inspector general¹s office in the department.

In June, Ms. McGann went directly to the Education Department.

³Eventually, I did an on-camera interview with a deputy inspector general
there who did comment on the program,² she said.

She said his name was Michael Deshields.

³After that,¹¹ Ms. McGann added, ³I decided I should file a Freedom of
Information Act request.²

Last month, she received documents in response to her request that were
heavily redacted, she said. Among them were Education Department memorandums
describing F.B.I. requests for information on specific people whose names
were blocked out and an internal memorandum dated June 16, 10 days after her
interview, stating that the data sharing program had terminated. The name of
the author of that memorandum was also redacted, she added.

³I learned that getting information from a federal agency you need to be
persistent,² Ms. McGann said. ³And I learned that public documents are
really a wealth of stories.²

She said she had accepted a position at Dow Jones Newswires in Washington.

Eric Lichtblau contributed reporting from Washington for this article.