It protects access to government information. The Declaration of Independence, approved during a secret meeting, complains England s King George III forced his policies by convening legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable and distant from the depository of their public records. A few years later, Congress tries to abandon this by jailing editors under the Alien and Sedition Acts. The election of Thomas Jefferson in 1800 ends those jailings. Congress censors the mails, outraged so much pornography from the new invention, the camera, is being sent to Civil War troops.
Mail censorship becomes common in wartime.
An American court recognizes a right to privacy, responding to a seminal article by Samuel D. Warren and Louis D. Brandeis in the Harvard Law Review. News media, say Warren and Brandeis, too often violate the rights of privacy of individuals. During World War I, the Espionage and Sedition acts make it a crime to criticize the government. Millions lose their ethnic and socialist publications as hundreds of newspapers and magazines are banned from the mails. As the First Amendment turns 140 years old, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that it definitely applies to the states.