In the News

Congresswoman Suzan DelBene joined a panel of experts on privacy policy at the UW’s Evans School of Public Policy & Governance on Monday morning to discuss the need for regulation of mass aerial surveillance. Last February, DelBene and fellow lawmakers introduced a bipartisan bill to reform outdated privacy legislation, which provided a starting point for the panel’s discussion. 

Along with DelBene, the panel included Chief Privacy Officer of Washington state, Alex Alben; director of the American Civil Liberties Union Privacy Project, Doug Klunder; UW law professor Bill Covington, who is also the director of the Technology Law and Public Policy Clinic; and panel moderator and associate law professor Ryan Calo. Calo began the conversation by asking DelBene about the importance of privacy legislation reform.

“People’s right to privacy is laid out in the Fourth Amendment,” DelBene said. “An example of this issue is the fact that if an email has been sitting on a server for 180 days, it is not subject to a warrant, whereas a piece of paper in your file folder is. That is based on law from 1986 that has not been updated to reflect changes in technology and, again, to support that same right to privacy.”

The panel discussed many topics, including the difference between public versus private use of aerial surveillance; the challenge of defining aerial technology in legislation; whether this topic should be addressed in the courts or in legislation; and possible reform actions that lawmakers can implement in the future. 

Alben and Klunder took different stances on how to define aerial technology. Alben stated it is most important to focus on principles rather than specific technologies. Klunder believed that it will take too long to come to such a conclusion, demonstrating the complexity of this topic.

“While it would be wonderful to come up with a broad, technology neutral bill, but it will be very, very hard,” Klunder said. “And if we wait until we can do that, we will have nothing. So there is a lot of value in doing some technology by technology bills. Over time that will build up to developing some of these principles.”

The panelists brought up several ideas for possible regulations, especially concerning drones, including visible serial numbers on drones, a national registry for drones, and GPS systems built into drones to prevent them from entering certain airspace regions.

An idea that was present throughout the conversation was that technology is always changing, and lawmakers need to continue to update policy to protect citizens’ privacy. Important developments that need policy in the near future include police body cameras, commercial sale of drones (they are predicted to be one of the biggest gifts this holiday season), and drone delivery from companies like Amazon. 

DelBene summarized the conversation in her final comments.

“The question is how do we keep up? And what is people’s reasonable expectation of privacy? Having a public conversation and having people actively involved is very, very important,” DelBene said.