FBI project involves student records
The project involved the FBI and the Department of Education researching students' personal information.
Published Sept. 8, 2006
In an effort called Project Strikeback, the Federal Education Department teamed up with the FBI to look into personal information on hundreds of student loan applications.
The investigation began soon after the Sept. 11 terror attacks and continued throughout a five-year span, the agencies said. The program ended in June. Under Project Strikeback, the Department of Education received names from the FBI and provided information to the bureau once the names were checked through the student aid database.
The program was reported by Laura McGann, a graduate student at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, as part of a reporting project centered around security issues and civil liberties.
"During the 9/11 investigation and continually since, much of the intelligence has indicated terrorists have exploited programs involving student visas and financial aid," FBI Assistant Director John Miller said in a statement. "In some student loan frauds, identity theft has been a factor."
Miller said the education department was asked to run names of subjects already involved in counterterrorism investigations to look for evidence of either student loan fraud or identity theft.
"No records of people other than those already under investigation were called for," Miller said in the statement.
Missouri Commissioner of Higher Education, Charles McClain, was contacted to see if Missouri universities were involved and did not comment.
The list included a few hundred names derived from 9/11 investigations, FBI spokeswoman Cathy Milhoan said.
"This is part of our mission, which is to take the leads we have and investigate them," Miller said in his statement.
Once the FBI filed the request, the education department examined the student financial aid database to determine if the individuals received or applied for federal student financial assistance, said Mary Mitchelson, counsel to the inspector general of the education department.
Only U.S. citizens and permanent residents are eligible to apply for financial aid.
The information collected on federal financial aid applications includes names, addresses, Social Security numbers, incomes and sometimes income and education information of parents.
Though information about Project Strikeback has only recently become public, Miller said there was no attempt to conceal the efforts and that they were referenced in publicly available briefings to Congress and the Government Accountability Office.
"People are trying to turn this into something that it wasn't," Milhoan said. "We are not out there arbitrarily running student records."
While researching the project, McGann said there was barely a mention to it and found "only one report containing one sentence" regarding to the program.
The information sharing is made possible under Exemption of the Privacy Act of 1974, Mitchelson said. "The exemption authorizes the release of personal data for purposes of a criminal investigation," she said in a statement.
Under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, better known as FERPA, student records are protected only when held by the school, but they can be obtained through the education department.
"The FBI won't even bother to contact a school if a student is protected under FERPA," Marks said. "At that point, they go straight to the education department."
Neither agency would say if any investigations resulted from Project Strikeback, but Mitchelson said the majority of the efforts concluded in 2002.
McGann said her interest grew in the program while reading a report written by the government that listed data-mining efforts by the agency.
"It was interesting that unexpected agencies, particularly the education department, were doing data-mining," McGann said.
McGann decided to look deeper into the program and eventually found reference to the report from the inspector general's office. She filed a Freedom of Information Act request and received documents describing Project Strikeback.
Though the project has raised questions about the privacy of student records and domestic spying, McGann said she was told the program was "a sexy title, and that's it."