Last February, the House gave an overwhelmingly bipartisan thumbs-up to Rep. Jeff Morris’ HB 2178, a bill that would have made it a crime to invade an individual’s presumably private space with camera-equipped airborne drones. Buoyed by that 92-6 House vote and widespread public support, the bill sailed over to the Republican-controlled Senate for consideration . . . and like so many other House bills, became a victim of that chamber’s inaction.
Fast-forward a few months, and HB 2178 is back in the news. Seems a downtown Seattle apartment resident looked out her 26th-floor window on a sunny Sunday morning in late June and came face-to-face with just such a camera-equipped drone, 300 feet above the pavement. The drone’s operators landed the device and made a clean getaway, so it’s uncertain just what they were doing. A safety inspection of a nearby construction crane? An innocent test flight? Or, as the frightened resident feared, something more sinister? [UPDATE: According to subsequent news reports, the operators were taking photos for a real-estate developer.]
Not surprisingly, the story quickly made headlines, and interest in Morris’ bill — a measure he plans to reintroduce in January — spiked. Two days after the mysterious airborne encounter, the 40th-district Democrat who chairs the House Technology & Economic Development Committee was interviewed by KOMO Newsradio. You can listen to that interview right here:
And for a more in-depth look at the issue of unmanned aircraft, stay tuned for a documentary currently being produced by TVW. Morris was recently interviewed at length for the program by TVW’s Christina Salerno.