The Bay Guardian today unveiled a plan to take Bay Area journalism “to the next level,” by offering readers an up-close look at local politics through the use of disruptive, innovative, crowd-sourced, cutting-edge technology that was inspired by the sharing economy.
Thanks to generous underwriting from the Knight Foundation and a partnership with Code for America, the Guardian has obtained an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), more commonly known as a drone. The paper has applied for certification from the Federal Aviation Administration and expects the drone to be airborne in less than 60 days.
The Guardian’s investigative journalism drone will enable our editorial team to shine a blazing spotlight on the activities of unregistered lobbyists, conservative billionaires, or political operatives. It will eliminate the need to submit public records requests and give us the capability to surveil city power brokers and collect real-time data.
The drone will instantly transmit surveillance video footage, streamed audio, and facial recognition identification data to SFBG office computers, and will be shared with local and federal authorities whenever there’s a threat level of orange or above, or when somebody really annoys us.
It will also be delivering newspapers to some of the more outlying areas, like Berkeley, West Portal, and France.
And we will begin using it immediately to track down and spy on the trolls who haunt the comment section of our website and dare to say that Tim Redmond isn’t funny. You’ll never see it coming.