Mr. Hehmeyer added that he did not feel the benefits of such Government tracking programs were worth the sacrifices. ''We have to learn where to draw the appropriate line,'' he said.

For many years the retail outlets of Farrell's have had customers fill out a birthday form so that they would get birthday cards from the company entitling them to free ice cream sundaes. Mr. Hehmeyer said the form explained that the names of those who signed the forms would occasionally be made available to other ''appropriate organizations such as the National Geographic.''

The executive said his company had an explicit understanding with the broker that the list would never be made available without the written permission of Farrell's and that Farrell's had never approved the sale to the Selective Service System.

Mr. Ebel said the Selective Service System bought the Farrell's list in 1983 from a list broker in New Jersey. Last October, he said, the system began using the list to mail 1,500 to 3,500 warning cards a month to young men whose listed birthdays indicated they were about to turn 18.

Mr. Ebel said the names in the ''Birthday Club'' list represented only a small percentage of the almost 1.5 million notices the Selective Service mails a year. He said the system only occasionally relied on commercial lists and that the two major sources of names and addresses were the state agencies that license drivers and the Defense Department, which compiles a list of high school graduates.