In 1890, a 34-year-old Bostonian lawyer penned an article asking whether the law should play a role in protecting citizens’ right to privacy against threats of technological intrusion. “Recent inventions and business methods call attention to the next step which must be taken for the protection of the person,” the lawyer wrote. “Numerous mechanical devices threaten to make good the prediction that ‘what is whispered in the closet shall be proclaimed from the house-tops.’”