Scandal’s Role in Creating a Surveillance Culture

Abstract

The basis of the first legal tort for privacy appeared in an 1890 issue of the Harvard Law Review. That article addressed the rising moral panic surrounding the use of snap cameras that allowed the middle and lower classes to circulate and publish photographs of elites without permission. This chapter explores the scandal that birthed American privacy law (the individual’s “right to be left alone”), documenting how advances in technology continually disrupt the control elites possess over both the publicity activities that create fame and the unwanted attention to private facts that creates scandal.