For the past five years, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been receiving personal student data from the U.S. Department of Education under a program called "Project Strike Back".
Specifically, the Department of Education was combing through public records, such as FAFSA files, or the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. The form determines eligibility for federal aid and any student who wishes to apply for assistance must fill it out.
Laura McGann, a recent graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, exposed the operation to the media and came across the story. As she began to research this project, McGann said she came to discover that the FBI was gathering the names of students which they described as suspicious names related to terrorism, that they were interested in investigating, she said.
The government's interest in student financial records is a direct response to terrorism investigations which revealed the role of such programs in terror plots, said FBI spokesperson Kathy Milhoan.
"During the 9/11 investigation, and continually since, much of the intelligence has indicated that terrorists have exploited programs involving student visas and financial aid," Milhoan said.
The investigation is narrow in scope, Milhoan said, and only a few hundred names were involved.
Under exemption seven of the Privacy Act, the Department of Education was allowed to divulge such information to the FBI, according to Mary Mitchelson, counsel to the inspector general of the Department of Education.
"There was no attempt to conceal these efforts in that they were referenced in publicly available briefings to Congress and the Government Accountability Office," Milhoan said.
During her investigation, McGann posed the question of whether or not it was acceptable to mine through the government's wealth of information possibly "infringing on people's right to privacy" in order to avoid missing something important.
"There are different viewpoints on whether this is good or bad and I think that makes an interesting argument," McGann said.
McGann's project was sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, she said.
"We were looking at privacy and civil liberties in the context of the post-9/11 world," McGann said. "We found a theme running through our stories --digital privacy and how the government has been using data in the war on terror."
McGann said she first discovered Project Strike Back while reading a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report in a course she took during a summer fellowship. She noted it was strange that the U.S. Department of Education would be mentioned in a GAO report and after discussing this with a professor, decided to research it.
Although the program wasn't classified, "it was a program that hadn't been reported on previously in any depth and had been overlooked by the media," McGann said.
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