In 2012, I was working at a small daily newspaper in Otter Tail County when a digital civil liberties group publicized a list of government agencies who had applied to the Federal Aviation Agency for a permission to fly a drone. Otter Tail County, primarily a rural area spotted with farms and small towns, was one of the agencies on the list, though the FAA had turned down its request. The revelation prompted several news outlets to question why the county would need such a device, lacing their reports with incredulity of perceived government invasion of privacy.
None of these outlets actually bothered to call the county to ask about the request, so I did. I was invited to the county’s geographic information systems department, and when I arrived, a beleaguered-looking employee pulled a 6-pound remote controlled airplane, a kind you could buy at any hobby store, out of a small back closet. The man, who said he’d been bombarded with complaints since the drone list was published, explained that the county had purchased the plane to take aerial photography for land surveying and mapping – tools that could be used when deciding how to lay out a building project, for example.
The county bought the plane in 2006 to save money; at the time, many municipalities were shelling out money for manned aircraft to take pictures for accurate mapping, and doing it by drone would cut costs and man hours. GIS employees were able to use it for about a year before the FAA told them they would need a permit, which was subsequently denied. The craft had been gathering dust since.
I decided right then that, when it comes to drones, the English language has failed us.
“Drone” is a scary word, and these days, it’s a word used specifically to scare. No matter your position on the validity of governments using unmanned aerial vehicles, “drone” conjures up images of stealthy, lightning-fast aircraft, winged automatons capable of spying or killing with equal alacrity. A local government or private citizen with a remote controlled airplane sounds harmless, or at least relatively innocent. Give them a drone, however, and they sound sinister.
That’s not to say that all federal drone use is bad or that no harm can be wrought by a guy with an RC plane. However, when national news outlets breathlessly reported earlier this year that a drone had crashed on White House grounds, my thoughts immediately went to the scary kind. Had a Predator UAV, complete with payload, fallen to earth just feet from the president’s bedroom? No. It was just a guy who’d lost control of his little quad-copter, but “Guy’s quad-copter bites it near White House” isn’t as compelling of a headline.
You can look up the meaning of a word in the dictionary, but most language has implicit connotations beyond what you’ll find in Webster’s.
The Forest Lake City Council understands this, which is why members trod lightly on the topic of drone use when they discussed possible regulations at a recent city workshop. Though some municipalities use drones for noninvasive procedures – like Otter Tail County’s desire to save a few bucks while updating their GIS database – the council members know the potential for drone abuse and the potential connotations of drone use. The body held off on any local regulation of drones in the city, but Councilman Michael Freer and Mayor Stev Stegner said that they did not want the city using them, even for regulatory inspections.
This was perhaps the wisest choice, particularly in a world where the line between perception and reality is frequently blurred. However, there’s still something about the word “drone” that doesn’t sit right – something that’s so disturbed the city of St. Bonifacius that the council there banned all public or private drone use without a warrant unless the drone was being used in an emergency situation. Here, we see the tendrils of perception encroaching on reality, as a St. Boni kid with a RC plane can no longer indulge his hobby in city limits without fear of being slapped with a felony.
William Shakespeare is credited with inventing hundreds of words now used in common English parlance throughout his career. Perhaps we should follow his lead and reserve “drone” for only the big-time unmanned aircraft, creating a new term for the smaller, less threatening varieties. We could call them “remote flyers” or “miniplanes” or any number of things (have an idea? Send it to us!). Talking about drones is important, but the way we talk about them is equally so.