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Product: Camouflage
Active Cameo   (+2, -2)  [vote for, against]
1. Hire Celebrities -or- Look Like Celebrities. 2. Operate Covertly 3. ????? 4. PROFIT!!!!

The ideal of camouflage is invisibility. However, this is unachievable with current technology, and is difficult to believably maintain while talking/interacting with local people during covert operations. This idea preserves anonymity while allowing normal interaction with local people. The idea can take two forms:

1) Hire celebrities: A military organization should hire celebrities from the area to be invaded to work for them in a part-time capacity. Celebrities who have extensive experience avoiding the public eye should be chosen.

2) Look like celebrities: Solders attempting covert operations should adopt the features and mannerisms of locally-known, rich and reclusive citizens. That way, if they are ever stopped by police while stealing secret documents, they can believably tell the police that they were "indulging an eccentricity" and probably have the authority to do whatever they were doing. Then, they can pull out a late-model cellphone and call their "private helicopter" to extract them before the local police are able to fact-check that it is indeed the celebrity.

edit: this is not normal spying technique because spies try to hire/impersonate nondescript, ordinary individuals rather than celebrities. Celebrities to be hired/impersonated should have instant name- and face-recognition among most of the public.
-- sninctown, May 12 2008

In what way does this not describe normal spying techniques?
-- DrCurry, May 12 2008


Wasn't this the plot of one of those _Mission: Impossible_ movies? Tom Cruise was disguised as some rich fellow or something that made me turn the TV off.
-- baconbrain, May 12 2008


Having paparazzi photos of your spy exchanging documents in your discrete meeting place. Explaining to kidnappers that, sadly, you are not actually Nicloe Kidman. Trying to seduce or befriend anyone for practical purposes is impossible. This idea is really bad. An anti-idea.
-- WcW, May 12 2008


In the first MI movie Cruise adopts the persona of a well-known politician, one who conveniently is 4' 9" with a rubbery, vaguely Cruise-esque face.

The first one is a great movie, I shan't have anyone bad mouth it. Even if Cruise is a massive twat.
-- theleopard, May 13 2008



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