UCLA will probably not turn over students’ private information to a student database being compiled by the federal government for military recruitment purposes unless it is served with a court order, a university official said.

Bob Naples, the dean of students, cited university policies governing the release of the student records and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, a federal law that protects the privacy of student education records, as reasons why it is unlikely UCLA would give records to the Pentagon or the private firm it has contracted to manage the database.

The database, known as the Joint Advertising and Market Research Recruiting Database, will compile information on high school students aged 16 to 18 and on college students, according to the notice of the program in the Federal Register.

The information requested includes students’ addresses, telephone numbers, Social Security numbers, GPAs and areas of study.

According to the notice, “The purpose ... is to provide a single central facility within the Department of Defense to compile, process, and distribute files of individuals who meet age and minimum school requirements for military service.”

“The information will be provided to the Services to assist them in their direct marketing recruiting efforts,” the notice said.

Reports of the database, which first appeared in the Washington Post on Thursday, have raised concerns among civil rights and privacy advocacy groups about the legality of the federal government collecting private information on citizens, especially minors who are still in high school.

“This is cause for great concern,” said Elizabeth Brennan, a spokeswoman for the ACLU of Southern California. “It’s like creating a master database of the youth in this country.”

The Pentagon has contracted BeNOW, a private strategic marketing firm, to manage the database, according to the notice.

The notice, which is dated May 23, also states that students can ask to be removed from any future recruitment lists.

Naples said he is not aware of any requests from the federal government or BeNOW asking UCLA to contribute information to the database.

If the university is contacted by the Department of Defense, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act and university policy would prevent it from sharing such information.

“I can’t imagine how (the Department of Defense or BeNOW) would expect to get what they need,” he said.

But if the federal government serves the university with a court order, the university might have to comply with the Pentagon’s requests.

“A court order would likely burden us to turn over the information,” Naples said.

Other University of California campuses would likely follow a similar procedure, Naples added.

Under the No Child Left Behind Act, the federal government is already given access to some students’ information, including names and addresses, which allows them to solicit potential recruits through direct mail, phone calls and house visits.

But the new database goes a step further by asking for students’ private information, Brennan said.

According to an interview transcript posted on the Department of Defense’s Web site, the Pentagon intends to use students’ Social Security numbers to eliminate duplicate information files that appear in their database.

Pentagon officials did not return phone calls seeking comment.

Brennan also said that by contracting a private firm to manage the database, the Pentagon appears to be bypassing laws designed to prevent the federal government from collecting information on its citizens who are not suspected of doing any wrongdoing.

News of the database comes at a time when the military is stretched thin around the globe, popular opinion is starting to turn against the war in Iraq, and recruiters are having an increasingly difficult time meeting their goals.

In May, while the Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps met or exceeded their active duty recruiting goals, the Army fell short by 1,661 recruits, achieving about 75 percent of its goal for that month, according to the Pentagon.

Meanwhile, of all the reserve services and the national guard, only the Air Force Reserve met its recruiting goal for the month of May.

In addition, President Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and top generals have all declined to set a timetable for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, though pressure from lawmakers and the public has been mounting to pull U.S. troops out of a war that has so far claimed over 1,700 lives.

Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.) said that though she sympathizes with the difficult straits of military recruiters, she and other members of Congress are concerned by what they see as the military’s use of “high pressure tactics” to target high school and college students, such as phone calls and visits to students’ homes by recruiters.

Sanchez, who is also a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said she has fielded complaints from parents in her district about targeted recruiting of their children, and that the new student database could exacerbate that.

“Until I understand how and why they use the information ... to me it doesn’t look good,” she said.