CBS Sunday Morning had a segment this morning on privacy, focusing in large part on the ridiculous firing of a teacher in Georgia for, in large part, vacation photos posted on Facebook.

What may have been the most interesting bit of the story, though, was a reference to this 1890 Harvard Law Review article about privacy, prompted in large part by the development of portable cameras which, for the first time, enabled people to take photos of others without their explicit permission.

“Instantaneous photographs and newspaper enterprise have invaded the sacred precincts of private and domestic life; and numerous mechanical devices threaten to make good the prediction that ‘what is whispered in the closet shall be proclaimed from the house-tops.’ ”

That second half of the sentence sounds awfully familiar, doesn’t it?

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 6th, 2011 at 10:49 am and is filed under This 'n' That.