New Recruit Strategy From The Georgia National Guard Will Use Surveillance Tactics To Enlist High School Students

The Georgia National Guard is on the hunt for new recruits and decided a new tactic was the best way to go about it.

The Intercept reported they will be using location-based phone surveillance, called geofencing, in order to potentially enlist Georgia high school students. The plan will focus on 67 public high schools, targeting phones found within a one-mile boundary of their campuses with recruiting advertisements “with the intent of generating qualified leads of potential applicants for enlistment while also raising awareness of the Georgia Army National Guard.”

The target age for this plan is 17 to 24.

The Department of Defense anticipates a minimum of 3.5 million ad views and 250,000 clicks from interested teens. Ironically, this government-funded branch using surveillance comes after government officials promoted the ban of TikTok – claiming the China-based social media platform was spying on Americans. According to Gizmodo, the ads will be placed across Instagram, Snapchat, music apps, and TV streaming sites.

Taking it a step further, the GA Guard, known as the sixth largest National Guard in the U.S., is also seeking vendors to target “parents or centers of influence,” including people like coaches and school counselors, with recruiting ads. Called “retargeting,” the new campaign plans to broadcast pro-Guard ads in order to follow students around while they use the internet and other apps.

While the campaign is aimed at older teenagers, experts say the Guard hasn’t thought this all the way through – younger teens and even children in middle and elementary schools could also end up receiving the ads. Benjamin Lynde, ACLU of Georgia lawyer, says this is a way “to bypass parental involvement in the recruiting process.” He feels that “parents should be involved from the onset.”

According to a Georgia National Guard spokesperson, the plan in the contract is “in its infant stages,” but an active ad campaign could begin as early as September of this year.