The Harvard Law Review published an article called The Right to Privacy in 1890.

The intensity and complexity of life, the essay said, have rendered necessary some retreat

from the world.

It went on, solitude and privacy have become more essential to the individual.

Modern enterprise and invention have, through invasions upon his privacy, subjected

him to mental pain and distress, far greater than could be inflicted by mere bodily injury.

The words in this article were written shortly after the Kodak camera was released in 1888.

And in the piece, the authors made the case for a reinterpretation or a reimagining of

privacy law as society modernized and these new technologies emerged.

With the invention of the Kodak camera, which was the first really portable camera, people's

images and their actions and their whereabouts could suddenly be captured with more accuracy

and more intrusion than ever before.

At the same time, yellow journalism was reaching its peak.

Newspapers ran gossip columns and scandal stories and circulated any sensational intimate

details they could find on people.

Businesses meanwhile were merging into big monopolies and even the government was growing in size

and strength.

In this era of information overload, the forces pressing on a person at the turn of the 20th

century felt bigger and stronger while the person felt smaller and more vulnerable.

The article in the Harvard Law Review insisted that citizens had a fundamental constitutional

right in America, quote, to be left alone.

There were two authors of the piece which came to be considered one of the most pivotal

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