protect the health and safety of their citizens.” (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Hill v. Colorado, 530 U.S. 703, 715 (2000). This court has long recognized “[i]t is clear that in the exercise of the police power, government may act to regulate, restrain or prohibit that which is harmful to the public welfare even though the regulation, restraint or prohibition might interfere with the liberty or property of an individual.” Chicago National League Ball Club, Inc. v. Thompson, 108 Ill. 2d 357, 368 (1985); People v. Warren, 11 Ill. 2d 420, 424-25 (1957) (collecting cases). ¶ 62 It is well established that government can protect individual privacy rights. In their influential 1890 law review article, future Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis and his coauthor argued for recognition of a distinct right to privacy. Samuel D. Warren & Louis D. Brandeis, The Right to Privacy, 4 Harv. L. Rev. 193 (1890). Reviewing various developments in the common law, the article described one of the problems it sought to address: “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 what Judge Cooley calls 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. For years there has been a feeling that the law must afford some remedy for the unauthorized circulation of portraits of private persons ***.” (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Id. at 195. Reviewing case law, the article explained that then-existing causes of action, such as breach of trust and property-based claims, had long been used to protect privacy interests. However, those actions had become inadequate to protect individual privacy in a changing world. Id. at 211. The article explained that the right to privacy does not prohibit publication of matters of public interest. As an example, the article argued that publishing that a private individual has a speech impediment or cannot spell may be proscribed, but publishing the same characteristics of a congressional candidate could not. Id. at 214-15. ¶ 63 Today, “the existence of a right of privacy is now recognized in the great majority of the American jurisdictions that have considered the question.” Restatement (Second) of Torts § 652A cmt. a, at 377 (1977). “As it has developed - 18 -