I've just closed the upstream ticket with these comments:
It's become clear that this problem is related to VirtualBox. It seems to affect users who are running a version of VirtualBox that can proxy USB events on the host to a virtual machine (the open source version of VirtualBox does not do this). As such, it's not a Shotwell bug. Marking as wontfix.
If anyone sees this behavior who does have VirtualBox installed, feel free to reopen.
I've just closed the upstream ticket with these comments:
It's become clear that this problem is related to VirtualBox. It seems to affect users who are running a version of VirtualBox that can proxy USB events on the host to a virtual machine (the open source version of VirtualBox does not do this). As such, it's not a Shotwell bug. Marking as wontfix.
If anyone sees this behavior who does have VirtualBox installed, feel free to reopen.