People value their personal privacy, as evidenced by bathroom door locks, window blinds and passwords.

As Americans, however, we don’t just value privacy—we expect it. And since­ The Privacy Act of 1975 guarantees privacy, any sense of self-entitlement to such is rightly ours. Recently though, our constitutional right to all things private has been under attack, giving room to question if we really have as much privacy as we once allowed ourselves to believe.

Take for example, the use of unmanned aircraft, more commonly referred to as drones. Drones have been making headlines quite a bit lately—twice on the front page of ­the Sacramento Bee this month, and not for accomplishments in terms of the fight on terrorism. Rather, on speculation of whether our privacy is under attack by law enforcement agencies right here in the U.S.

Yes, federal law does prohibit the use of drones in densely populated urban areas. However, an Unmanned Aircraft Systems Fact Sheet released Feb. 15 by the Federal Aviation Administration says there is a way around the prohibition. One only needs “to obtain a Certificate of Waiver or Authorization (COA) for public aircraft.”
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The UAS Fact Sheet goes on to explain, “COAs are available to public entities that want to  fly a UAS in civil airspace. Common uses today include law enforcement, firefighting, border patrol, disaster relief, search and rescue, military training, and other government operational missions.”

A COA issued means someone is getting droned, which introduces a possibility of compromised privacy. Who can guarantee a drone on a mission to capture surveillance footage wouldn’t accidentally take a photo of, say, maybe a City College student sunbathing in the nude? And who can guarantee that picture won’t end up on the Internet? It could happen. After all, the FAA also states on that same fact sheet that as of Feb. 15, there are 327 active COAs.

Some may argue that Google openly admits to invading the privacy of those who use the company’s products, cleverly referring to it as marketing research. Opting out of such research is possible; however, finding the webpage link to doing so is sometimes difficult.

Say you do successfully opt out of such marketing tactics and move on to matters more studious, such as homework. Mac users who choose to use Dictate, Mountain Lion’s convenient dictation application, are subject to Apple collecting other data.

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But Apple isn’t the only company able to collect data—once again, Google admits to gathering sensitive information.

According to the Google Apps for Education Agreement, as a “FERPA School Official,” Google apps for education also has access to the personal information of students and as a school official, can share that information with its “affiliates.”

Bottom line, a variety of entities are invading our privacy.
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The cold truth of the matter is that those efforts are not going to stop. You can do something to make those efforts less successful though.

• Read disclosures before clicking “I Agree to the Terms of Service” buttons. Boring, yes. But if you agree to the terms without first reading them, you may be giving that company actual permission to invade your privacy.
• Change settings for your online accounts to private. Typically, these settings are available via a redirect link from a website’s home page.
• Find out what personal information is available for scrutiny by prospective employers, school admission counselors, scholarship committees, etc. Privacy Watch offers Facebook account holders an easy-to-use tool to learn their Facebook online privacy score, free at http://www.profilewatch.org/

Do your part to protect your privacy. In doing so, you can tell corporate bigwigs no, that your private information is just that—private.