The Right To Be Let Alone: 1890 law article, "right to privacy" to 1920 Supreme Court Privacy Dissent needs to be ReEmbraced

 In 1928, Justice Brandeis eloquently disagreed with the majority decision in Olmstead v. United States that wiretapping did not require a warrant because it involved no physical trespass. The framers of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, he argued,

 “sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions, and their sensations. They conferred, as against the Government, the right to be let alone—the most comprehensive of rights and the one most valued by civilized men.” 

His views on wiretapping ultimately prevailed, as did his belief that privacy was a constitutionally protected right.

 https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/privacy/Privacy_brand_warr2.html

 the right to property secured to the individual his lands and his cattle. Later, there came a recognition of man's spiritual nature, of his feelings and his intellect. Gradually the scope of these legal rights broadened; and now the right to life has come to mean the right to enjoy life, -- the right to be let alone;  the right to liberty secures the exercise of extensive civil privileges; and the term "property" has grown to comprise every form of possession -- intangible, as well as tangible.....

The intensity and complexity of life, attendant upon advancing civilization, have rendered necessary some retreat from the world, and man, under the refining influence of culture, has become more sensitive to publicity, so that solitude and privacy have become more essential to the individual; but modern enterprise and invention have, through invasions upon his privacy, subjected him to mental pain and distress, far greater than could be inflicted by mere bodily injury.

 

The general object in view is to protect the privacy of private life,

It is believed that the common law provides him with one, forged in the slow fire of the centuries, and to-day fitly tempered to his hand. The common law has always recognized a man's house as his castle, impregnable, often, even to his own officers engaged in the execution of its command. Shall the courts thus close the front entrance to constituted authority, and open wide the back door to idle or prurient curiosity?

 https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/232/gilbert-v-minnesota

Gilbert delivered a speech in August 1917 at a public meeting of the NPL in Red Wing, Minnesota, in which he said that “if they conscripted wealth like they conscripted men the war would not last 48 hours” and “if this is a great democracy, why should we not vote on the conscription of men?” He went on to state “we were stampeded into this war by newspaper rot to pull England’s chestnuts out of the fire!”

Gilbert was arrested for violating the Minnesota sedition statute that made it illegal “to speak, or teach, by word of mouth opposition to the war, or to advocate against enlistment.”

  Justice Louis D. Brandeis also dissented, arguing that the Minnesota law outlawed beliefs, not just actions, and that it would invade the private security of the family if it prevented a father from advising his son not to join the army for reasons of conscience or religion. He added that the statute deprived persons of rights guaranteed by the Constitution.

In citing a long list of cases that showed the use of due process to protect property rights, he observed sarcastically, “I cannot believe that the liberty guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment includes only liberty to acquire and to enjoy property.”