Protecting Sexual Privacy with Law

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Publication Type: 
Other Writing
Publication Date: 
April 16, 2014

Technological change is at the heart of much information privacy law. Recall privacy law’s beginning. In 1890, Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis, then law partners, wrote the The Right to Privacy in response to the emerging privacy vulnerabilities of their era. Then, snap cameras and the penny press enabled intrusions into the “sacred precincts of the home.” Unwanted disclosures of “domestic intimacies” produced mental distress far greater than physical harm, they argued, warranting law’s protection of the “right to be let alone.” Courts and legislatures soon followed suit, redressing privacy harms.

Read the full piece at Forbes.