As New York students prepare for the start of another school year, we turn to an issue that concerns many parents: the increasing presence of military recruiters in the nation’s high schools and the military’s ability to gather information about students.

The military has launched an aggressive campaign to recruit students to fill the ranks of the armed services. And since some recent laws have gone into effect, many educators, students and parents have complained that recruiters are using heavy-handed tactics to harass students, violate students' privacy rights, and target poor students and students of color.

In response, the NYCLU and its allies have been providing resources for students their parents and teachers who want to protect their right to keep private that information and not be harassed by overly aggressive recruiters and to be able to report abuses if they happen.

This week, in Part 1 of our Back to School series on protecting student's privacy rights, we listen to a number of reports detailing some of the abuses that have taken place.

In our first report, we listen in as author David Goodman, from "Mother Jones" and the NYCLU's Ari Rosmarin detail the depth of the problems in a report from Democracy Now.

For More information on how to protect student's privacy rights, and how to keep that information from ending up in the Pentagon and Department of Defense databases, and how to "opt-out" your students, click here for the NYCLU's Youth and Student's Rights web page. And here for the NYCLU Project on Military Recruitment and Student's Rights.