Freedom to Wander Naked Around Your Apartment Is Under Siege by Drones

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Here’s a fun new thing to worry about: peeping tom drones.

KGW reports that recently, a Seattle woman was wandering nekkid around her 26th-floor apartment. As one does. (If chillin’ in your underwear on a Sunday afternoon is wrong, I don’t want to be right.) But she looked outside her window and spotted something unexpected and alarming: a drone.

“It was freaky,” said Pleiss. “You don’t expect to be walking around indecent in your apartment and then have this thing potentially recording you.”

Her building promptly called the cops, and the incident made the local media. That’s when the guys who actually own the drone surfaced and explained that naw, they were just doing some harmless surveying for a developer considering building on the site, who wanted a sense of the potential views. No creeps here, just capitalists!

“Yesterday, when I found out that there was a news story, I immediately contacted the Seattle Police Department, let them know my name, the name of my company, what we were there for and who my client was,” Vaughn said. “Then, they called my client to confirm that we were there for a reasonable purpose.”

“I’ve had attorneys that have asked us to do land surveys and look at other people’s property and I just say no,” he added. “People who want us to collect information about other people, they aren’t our clients.”

Maybe Pleiss feels reassured, but… sounds like they still ended up peering into her apartment, even if only by accident. Besides, what’s to keep an actual peeping tom from using a similar excuse? “Oh, yeah, totally just taking photos… for my blog… and stuff.” Even if this incident isn’t enough to make you worry, consider these even more alarming stories: One woman posted on Reddit about being creeped-upon via drone while at the beach; last year, another Seattle woman complained about a dude who wouldn’t stop buzzing her home with his drone.

It’s enough to make you downright nostalgic for the days of Rear Window, when spying at least required a pair of binoculars. I wonder what local laws have to say about capturing trespassing drones with a net.

(h/t Business Insider)

Photo via Robert Mandel/Shutterstock.

 
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