It appears that the “Drone people” have decided that they need an extreme makeover to change the image of drones from authoritarian killing machines to something more like a really really smart toaster. Company officials are about to launch a publicity campaign to change the public perceptions of drones after conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer said recently that the first person to shoot down a surveillance drone on U.S. soil will be a “folk hero.” It is not clear when this ” How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb Drone” will start.
Michael Toscano, President of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI), says that the industry will soon start the publicity campaign. It is not clear what group of Mad Men ad executives will tackle the problem. However, they will seek to change the view of the drones as threatening privacy or safety.
The industry already has a Gretchen West, fetching “Domestic Drone Advocate” who appears on Fox.
The article below discusses the recently uncovered Air Force document laying out how the government can circumvent laws to use drones to monitor the activities of Americans.
Some standard publicity moves can be expected like photo ops of drones visiting wounded veterans in hospitals and commercials showing them at home with their little drones. However, they may want to ramp it up a bit. Here are a few suggestions:
1. Change the name of drones from menacing monikers like “the predator” to “the sky buddy.”
2. Use drones to locate missing kids, cats, and car keys on local news.
3. 
Show a drone next to a Ted Nugent clip and ask “who would you prefer to hover outside of your house at night?”
4. Have a drone marry Kim Kardashian and then go on an interview tour to explain why it just couldn’t stay married more than a week with someone who is so self-engrossed and materialistic.
5. Release talking points to Fox anchors showing more people are killed each year by civil libertarians driving than drones.
6. Have Rush Limbaugh attack drones as “sluts” and “prostitutes” who want the taxpayer to subsidize their lifestyle.
7. Distribute bumper stickers at Tea Party conventions comparing the “American-made drones” to a “foreign-born President” and proclaiming “all drones are straight.”
8. Play on the rising angst of permanently single and divorced Americans with a campaign promising “The BFF Force: Drones will never leave you.”
9. 
Reveal that drones are all Cubs fans (who have not been a threat to anyone in decades).
10. More drones mean fewer black helicopters.
Any other suggestions for the good people at AUVSI?
Source: Salon
Drones are so neighborly. Just part of the block watch unit and all. -Jill
The drones will ease the current burden on the “block watch units.” Much more efficient.
I liked the part about how if they just happen to catch someone “acting suspiciously”, they can keep the footage for 90 days! 😉 Drones are so neighborly. Just part of the block watch unit and all.
Interestingly drone operators have a very high incidence of PTSD. That’s because they watch the people they will blow up for days, sometimes weeks before they kill them. The drones that just killed people in Yemen were flying low for a few days before they took out civilians. Just a few fun facts that you’ll never learn from our newz.
After reading this article, I now have visions of Montag running to escape the mechanical hounds. SiFy? I think not.
Have mall Santas distribute mini-drones during the holiday season. Put a drone-shaped candy bar inside.
Those mini-drones would be “toys”, of course… tiny little toy drones… We can’t have kids taking each other out…
I would think that if you named the drones, Sky King, all of us older citizens would get a warm and fuzzy feeling remembering the TV show from the 50′s.
A good hearty laugh on this end, rafflaw. Thanks.
I would think that if you named the drones, Sky King, all of us older citizens would get a warm and fuzzy feeling remembering the TV show from the 50’s.
Prof.,I don’t think naming the drones after the Cubs would be effective because the drones would not stay above the 500 foot mark! 🙂
@Bron “a good potato cannon could probably reach to about 600′. ”
From Wiki we know “The Predator’s infrared camera with digitally-enhanced zoom has the capability of identifying the heat signature of a human body from an altitude of 3 km (10,000 ft), making the aircraft an ideal search and rescue tool.[15]”
My impression was that in Afghanistan the operational altitude is actually quite a bit higher maybe several tens of thousands of feet.
Just how do you good-ole-boys plan to lure the predator down to 600 feet anyway – offer it a PBR, offer it a toke, show it the best place to catch cat fish in 6 states?
If your best plan is to scare the poor thing with black powder, I think I just going to buy a parasol to shield my privacy.
Wouldn’t be at all surprised if this is one of justifications for that “propaganda in the US is ok” amendment. Wonder what else they’ve got planned.
Should be an asterisk * see post on propaganda.
“White House Gave Hollywood Filmmaker Access To Team That Killed Bin Laden, Records Show”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/23/white-house-kathryn-bigelow-bin-laden_n_1538847.html?ref=topbar
Give her whatever she needs to produce a couple of blockbusters about drones, here and abroad.
Cheeze! If even the mighty Kraphammer is against them who is for them? Of course he may be against them simply because there is a Dem in the White House so its not a fair conclusion to draw just yet.
a good potato cannon could probably reach to about 600′. If you had an empty Bud can filled with black powder and OO buckshot with a timed fuse, you could probably take it out if it got close enough.
That is a redneck AAA round.
The draw back is the possibility of premature powder ignition.
@DonS “where is the money going to come from to acquire, operate and maintain the drone fleets?”
Drones are far more cost effective than helicopters. Every LE agency already has or is saving its civil forfeiture money to buy a helicopter. The transition to drones will (1) save money and (2) put more LE units in the field sooner.
What better outcome could there possibly be? Just remember drones save lives.
Huxley predicted that propaganda would become so fine tuned (e.g. “spin”, “public relations”), that eventually people would “love their servitude” and there would be “dictatorship without tears so to speak”.
Karl Marx had a “better” vision, he predicted that when American workers detected the plutocracy controlled plutonomy, they would revolt and take back the control of the means of production.
My money is on Huxley.
Will the drone have to get some kind of warrant before it fires a hellfire missile through your living room window or is anything above ground federal air space which can be breached at will by federal authorities?
If the drown lawfully fires the hellfire missile at your living room window but bad weather or technical malfunction cause the missile to hit your neighbors house, does your neighbor have a claim against the federal government, or does the federal government have some kind of sovereign immunity? Does the neighbor have a claim against you for recklessly provoking the drone to fire?
Is malfunction of the drone or a missile it fires a foreseeable circumstance?
When one considers that drones add immeasurably to our safety and security is there any possible rational objection to deploying and using them?
“2. Use drones to locate missing kids, cats, and car keys on local news.”
The kids’ campaigns would dovetail nicely with the above.
So with all the local and state budgets supposedly so stretched, where is the money going to come from to acquire, operate and maintain the drone fleets? And for what?
I’ll bet every drug enforcement unit is going to want one to augment their pot-spotting flyovers in rural areas (because we all know that Buddy growing a patch in the woods or between his corn rows is going to corrupt our very moral country), etc.
How about anti “terror” units wanting one to surveil and intimidate protest marches? All for protection of the honest folks, off course.
I’m sure we’ll see arguments about efficiencies to be achieved, blah, blah blah. But anyone who trusts much of anything said by any government affiliated surveillance unit has less brainpower than a drone has electronics. But that still doesn’t mean the public should be lulled into accepting this leap of big brother mania, regardless of the strengths or weaknesses of the legal privacy argument(s).
Take the long view. Have mall Santas distribute mini-drones during the holiday season. Put a drone-shaped candy bar inside. Neighborhood cops could give them to kids while out on patrol, as a part of the “Drones Are Your Friends” program.
Question. How does a drone know the difference between an Iman or an al qaeda guy and just the run of the mill guy with a turban?
The article tended to drone on. I am wondering how a drone is so different from an unmanned missle. The Iranian muppets in Gaza send unmanned missles into Israel to blow people up and no one complains that they are drones. A drone is a slower guy with some precision or method to the madness. Perhaps the campaign slogan should be: Method to madness. Maybe employ a drawing of the Mad Magazine guy.