PRIVACY RIGHTS IN A PUBLIC SOCIETY: PROTECTING YOUR CLIENT AND YOURSELF FROM INVASIONS OF PRIVACY BY REGINALD A. HIRSCHt I. II.
INTRODUCTION ...........................................579 MODERN PRIVACY RIGHTS IN A PUBLIC SOCIETY ......................... 581
III. PROTECTING YOUR CLIENT ....................................... 585
A. B.
PrivacyInside the H ome ...................................... 586 Privacy Outside the Home ..................................... 594 IV . PROTECTING YOURSELF ......................................... 600
V . C ON CLU SION ..................................................... 609
I.
INTRODUCTION
In 1890, Samuel D. Warren and future Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis attempted to determine whether the existing law at the time provided a principle that could properly be invoked to protect the privacy of individuals. In their seminal law review article entitled, The Right to Privacy, they wrote:
Recent inventions and business methods call attention to the next step which must be taken for the protection of the person, and for securing to the individual ... the right "to be let alone." 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."1 In the 125 years since they wrote these words, "instantaneous photographs" have moved to hand-held devices, cell phones, and to the virtual world of the intemet and social media. And while technology
t Reginald A. Hirsch is a lawyer with the Law Office of Reginald A. Hirsch in Houston, Texas. The author would like to thank Joseph Anderson, a recent graduate of South Texas College of Law Houston for his invaluable assistance in completing this Article. 1. Samuel D. Warren & Louis D. Brandeis, The Right to Privacy, 4 Harv. L. Rev. 193, 195 (1890) (footnote omitted).