You’ve heard of the annual Audubon bird count.
Now you can take part in a drone count. Not the bees – the unmanned aircraft.
Here at Great Lakes Echo we’ve been running a series of stories about the use and potential of unmanned aerial vehicles. If nothing else, we’ve discovered that no one seems to have a clue of how many of these things are out there.
They crop up in unusual situations. For instance, there was this recent uproar over the FAA putting an end to a service that delivered beer to ice anglers in Minnesota.
Here’s the company’s video promoting the service.
To get a handle on what’s out there, a group called MuckRock is doing a drone census. MuckRock says it creates government transparency tools:
“As the only public records request service of its kind in the United States, MuckRock serves journalists, researchers, activists and historians, with a track record of over 2,000 requests.”
More here.
By soliciting tips from the public, last year the group queried some 350 government agencies about their use of drones. That produced a number of news stories.
Now they’re going back for another look:
“The second iteration of the Drone Census is bigger, more exhaustive and even higher-flying. We intend to (literally) write the book on domestic drones. Watch this space and the Motherboard site over the coming weeks for updates and analysis on who has drones, what they’re doing with them and whether privacy concerns are being taken into account.”
But they’re looking for help, which is where readers come in:
“As part of the first Drone Census push, MuckRock put out an open call: where do you want us to poke around for drones? More than 100 people submitted government agencies that piqued their curiosity and hunches. And it paid off. Some of our most fascinating scoops and bizarre findings came from these crowdsourced leads, so we’re doing it again.”
A tip request form is at the bottom of this page.
Says MuckRock:
“…join the investigation and submit your local police department, emergency response office, university or dogcatcher to the Drone Census. The weirder the query and longer the shot, the better, as far as we’re concerned.”