Constitutional Privacy in the 21st Century The Information Highway & Your Right to Privacy
Leslie Judd-Paier
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Early invasions of privacy could be treated as trespass, assault, or eavesdropping. Part of the reason for the delay in recognizing privacy as a fundamental right is that most modern invasions of privacy involve new technology (e.g., telephone wiretaps, microphones and electronic amplifiers for eavesdropping, photographic and video cameras, computers for collecting/storing/finding information). Before the invention of such technology, one could be reasonably certain that conversations in private (e.g., in a person’s home or office) could not be heard by other people. Before the invention of computer databases, one might invade a few persons’ privacy by collecting personal information from interviews and commercial transactions, but the labor-intensive process of gathering such information made it impossible to harm large numbers of victims. Further, storing such information on paper in file cabinets made it difficult to use the information to harm victims, simply because of the disorganized collection of information (Standler, 1997 essay).