Surveillance Drone Industry Prepares Propaganda Blitz

Surveillance Drone Industry Prepares Propaganda Blitz




PR campaign will bombard Americans with positive messages about technology

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Tuesday, May 22, 2012

In the aftermath of conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer’s observation that the first person to shoot down a surveillance drone on U.S. soil will be a “folk hero,” the drone industry has committed itself to launching a propaganda blitz aimed at bombarding the public with positive messages about the technology.



“After issuing a statement denouncing Krauthammer’s remarks as “irresponsible” and “dangerous,” (Michael) Toscano said the AUVSI would go on the offensive against critics. While the strategy is still being shaped, Toscano made it sound like something straight out of a crisis-management textbook — or Orwell. The AUVSI wants to bombard the American public with positive images and messages about drones in an effort to reverse the growing perception of the aircraft as a threat to privacy and safety,” reports Salon.

Toscano, president of the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, is eager to keep the PR nice and simple. “You have to keep repeating the good words,” he said, adding that the word “drones” should also be dispensed with because of its negative connotations and replaced with the term “remotely piloted vehicles”.

Congress recently passed legislation paving the way for what the FAA predicts will be somewhere in the region of 30,000 drones in operation in US skies by 2020.

Privacy advocates have warned that the FAA has not acted to establish any safeguards whatsoever, and that congress is not holding the agency to account.

In addition, a recently uncovered Air Force document circumvents laws and clear the way for the Pentagon to use drones to monitor the activities of Americans.

Incidents involving the drones in recent months have hardly provided positive spin for the industry.

Last week a mystery object, thought to be a military or law enforcement drone, flying in controlled airspace over Denver almost caused a catastrophic mid air crash with a commercial jet.

Last summer, police in North Dakota used a Predator drone to spy on a family who refused to give back three cows and their calves that wandered onto their 3,000-acre farm.