12 ms·

Drone firm DJI promises 'local data mode' to fend off US government's mooted ban

119 points by LinuxBender 6y ago

moepstar 6y ago
One wonders why such a mode isn't present from the onset - and why customers accept the lacking of such :(
- vb6sp6 6y ago
  Most people don't seem to care about data privacy
- hashkb 6y ago
  Because we're accustomed to American companies such as Google and every bank trampling on out privacy.
- leetcrew 6y ago
  it should be of particular concern to drone hobbyists. perhaps things have changed since I got bored of flying drones, but I recall it being very hard to operate a drone completely legally. the rules I knew of were themselves a pain to follow; the worst was the requirement to notify every helipad within five miles or so. at the time, I could use airmap to get a list of numbers for all the helipads in my area, but the listed numbers were often some random person's cell. even when I went through the entire list and dutifully called each number, I'm not 100% sure I fulfilled the legal obligation. I always wondered if I was in violation of any state/local laws I was totally unaware of. it seems pretty rare that any drone laws are actually enforced against hobbyists, but the penalties are pretty stiff. having flight data copied back to a remote server for authorities to pore over later seems like a pretty substantial risk.
  - closetohome 6y ago
    DJI in fact advertises the fact that they'll happily broadcast your information to law enforcement in realtime - https://www.dji.com/aeroscope https://www.dji.com/aeroscope It's a little scary.
    - leetcrew 6y ago
      I concede they are in a tough and uncertain spot with so much drone regulation still up in the air. still, it's always gross to see a company enthusiastically aiding the prosecution of its own customers.
philips 6y ago
My take: DJI, Apple, Huawei, Google etc are all in a similar boat where the governments they operate under have publicly and privately pressured them to use their profitable platforms for spying or gathering evidence. This reduces their profitablity as consumers have less confidence the product isn't working against them. But in the case of DJI and Huawei and TikTok the US is more concerned about how those chinese companies erode US business like boeing, cisco or Facebook. And instead of saying it is primarily economic protectionism they make it a defense issue to try and tamp demand. In the end the best thing for consumers is if Apple, DJI, etc compete on having privacy preservation and feel compelled to make their products resistant to government influence. So this new DJI feature is a good thing for consumers it seems.
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  > My take: You're so wrong about saying this is not a national security issue. China has been in an undeclared war with the US for 40 years. You can learn more on the Youtube "China in Focus - NTD" channel. > feel compelled to make their products resistant to government influence. All Chinese companies are controlled by the CCP. What DJI wants is irrelevant. Each company in China over 50 employees has a CCP cell to monitor their obedience. Obligatory Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot
- libertine 6y ago
  While I agree with you, I think there's something that should be pointed out: China stance on foreign companies doing business in China. Currently China wants all the perks of the open global market, while closing it's own. I don't understand how this is allowed.
  - vkou 6y ago
    China's market is not closed to foreign companies. This isn't 1990 anymore. American brands are everywhere in China, from Teslas, to iPhones, to McDonalds, to Starbucks, to the NBA, to the list goes on and on and on. Google, Facebook, Apple each make billions of dollars from China, every year. Calling that a closed market is... Not at all accurate. It's by no means a fully[1] open market, but it's not a closed one. [1] The definition of fully also varies from country to country. Is Canada a fully open market? No. For example, there's a lot of government protectionism surrounding media, and media infrastructure. Is the US a fully open market? No - again, not in the case of media infrastructure. Neither is an open market when it comes to food, or medical drugs. (For good reason, in my opinion - but that's just that - a political opinion. Other people have different opinions on this subject.)
hashkb 6y ago
The alliteration in the sub-heading is choice.
dellcybpwr 6y ago
Not that I need a drone.. but I've thought about one in the past.. and having to not only use their app but have it connected to the internet has been a big deterrent and thus far have not used one.
- omgbobbyg 6y ago
  I have a DJI Mini drone (which is awesome), I use it with a Google Pixel that has no internet connection (no SIM card and no WiFi) and it works fine.
  - xeromal 6y ago
    I have a mini too. I have a samsung ultra that's way too big to fix in the controller so I use a dummy pixel 2 as well. Like you said, works great and I can keep it in my carrying case.
  - alistairSH 6y ago
    Is that true for the larger drones? The Mini is light enough that it doesn't need approval to fly (in the US). The larger drones require approval to fly, which is often accomplished real-time within the control app. [I don't know if this is the case, just guessing/wondering if it is]
    - a_t48 6y ago
      That should be true unless you're near an airport.
    - grecy 6y ago
      I think the app figures out where you are based on GPS co-ords and lets you fly or not. That's what my mavic mini appears to do when I fly it with no internet connection. It will even pop up warnings like "airport flight restriction nearby" and it does that with no internet...
      - omgbobbyg 6y ago
wisemanwillhear 6y ago
> A code audit carried out by FTI Consulting was said to have revealed no causes for concern, with DJI posting the exec summary (but not the full audit) on its website as a PDF. It had access to 20 million lines of source code, according to the summary, with analysis focusing on code concerned with “communication protocols and network activity with host infrastructure”. DJI can pay for all the audits in the world, if they are not trustworthy they can find a way to spy in spite of the audit. Computer and software systems are just too complex to declare clean with audits. This is a trust problem that DJI simply cannot change in their present state.
- xeromal 6y ago
  Yeah, I think the only way to "kind of" verify would be to have the consulting firm build from source and have a drone be fully operable. Or run a public version inside a black box and monitor all traffic.
- oh_sigh 6y ago
  An audit means nothing if you have the ability to send and execute custom code to any device which uses your hardware. No one is going to audit an internet connected Windows 98 machine and say "Yup, no malware on here", and expect that to hold true for even a second after the statement was made.
- onetimemanytime 6y ago
  Is their software gonna be audited every time they do an update? Nope, so they can change it
awinter-py 6y ago
woo! dept of interior insisted on this, got a forked DJI OS, and did an expensive consulting round to verify that it didn't phone home looks like all it takes to negotiate privacy w/ a big tech company is a million+ procurement process and a trade war
- mleonhard 6y ago
  Can you share a link with more information on this forked DJI OS?
  - awinter-py 6y ago
    yeah the dept of interior released a pdf https://www.doi.gov/sites/doi.gov/files/uploads/oas_flight_test_and_technical_evaluation_report_-_dji_uas_data_managment_assurance_evaluation_-_7-2-19_v2.0.pdf https://www.doi.gov/sites/doi.gov/files/uploads/oas_flight_t... they call it a 'government edition', if you search that term in the PDF the first few matches give some details
zaroth 6y ago
I have a DJI Mavic Mini and I was very impressed with the hardware and software overall. My kids and I have had a lot of fun flying this little drone! It does log every flight to the cloud, showing the telemetry logs of exactly where the drone flew and what it sent and received along the way (not full video, just telemetry). I find the logs extremely cool to look over after the fact when analyzing a flight. Their insurance program saved my butt when I lost radio contact when I flew the drone over to a friend's back yard, and had misconfigured the "return-to-home" altitude too low, so it promptly flew itself into a tree trying to get back to me. $30 to get a full replacement was a huge relief. It doesn't bother me much that they have a copy of my telemetry logs. I wouldn't want them to have copies of the video or pictures, and as I understand it those never leave the SD card. It would be nice to have a "local data mode", but on the other hand, their cloud service is also authorizing the flight envelope based on GPS coordinates, and it's important that the device doesn't let itself be flown into air traffic corridors and the like. Drones are a serious responsibility, and can be misused to cause a lot of damage, I'm totally willing to trade off some amount of tracking for the ability to have off-the-shelf access to this tech.
- davinic 6y ago
  > Drones are a serious responsibility, and can be misused to cause a lot of damage >I flew the drone over to a friend's back yard, and had misconfigured the "return-to-home" altitude too low You claim to understand the need for responsible drone ownership, yet in the same comment mention how you crashed your drone (luckily only into a tree) while violating clearly-stated FAA line-of-sight guidelines (and also not having understood the basic flight controls and recovery options). This is some serious cognitive dissonance.
  - coldtea 6y ago
    What is the real cognitive dissonance is how "flew the drone over to a friend's back yard" is interpreted as some violation rule about line-of-sight guidelines -- or whatever this has to do with "not having understood the basic flight controls and recovery options".
  - zaroth 6y ago
danboarder 6y ago
"A junior US defence minister, Ellen Lord, in charge of procurement, added to the aerospace magazine: “We looked at the fact that basically DJI from China had decimated our industrial base for small UAVs, quadcopters and so forth, through pricing that was sub-cost and so forth.”" This is so wrong headed. DJI is the Apple of small drones and basically created the category. I've used all competitors over the years including 3DR and Parrot and I suggest as an analogy that they are all Nokia style 'feature phones' compared to DJI's iphone line. That said, there is a healthy ecosystem of larger custom drones for industry as well as FPV drone companies that exist, again as analogy perhaps like the Linux ecosystem exists in the presence of Apple.
sneak 6y ago
Even DJI stuff that poses no risk whatsoever to health or safety, like their Osmo Pocket 4k gimbal camera, or their Osmo Action gopro-clone, require that you “activate” them, iPhone style, which logs at the very least your OS + IP (and thus rough location) + serial number to DJI. It’s bullshit. These are not internet-attached devices, they shouldn’t be spying on us. I’d love to see similar approaches to even domestically-made and domestically-hosted manufacturers and collection APIs.
- coronadisaster 6y ago
  > These are not internet-attached devices, they shouldn’t be spying on us. Should all internet-connected devices spy on us?
fuzzylearner2 6y ago
This new change is actually good for consumers though. One of the things that US government previously wanted was internet being necessary whenever you fly a drone. This data was also supposed to be sent to a third party picked by the government and they would hold this data for months. I think it was on the lines of remote id or something. Unrelated, but recently I finished an app for making recreational drone flying easy. Check it out https://dronetrails.app https://dronetrails.app or download the test flight app at https://testflight.apple.com/join/id9NkioE https://testflight.apple.com/join/id9NkioE
kube-system 6y ago
The headline here is clearly misleading some of the people in the comments. The proposed ban is on US federal government purchases of DJI drones. > “The US Congress is considering banning the US federal government from using foreign-made drones as part of its 2021 National Defense Authorization Act,”
tomc1985 6y ago
Why does it take threats of a national embargo to unlock functionality that should be present in EVERY device from the start?
dreamcompiler 6y ago
Why does a drone need 20 million lines of code? Windows 95 had about 15 million LOC.
- vlovich123 6y ago
  Probably runs Linux for all the device drivers, network stack etc.
cblconfederate 6y ago
It's like we have a new Colonial Era, where tech from various powers wants to loot the data of people around the world. This time it is different though, because unlike gold, you can duplicate data for free. So, in the end if everyone has everyone's data, is that valuable at all?
- SergeAx 6y ago
  When they say "data is a new oil", they also mean that it should be processed to maximize value.
  - cblconfederate 6y ago
    an non-scarce asset cannot have high value. I guess thats why there's this "data protectionism" trend, though it will probably fail

119 points by LinuxBender 6y ago

moepstar 6y ago

One wonders why such a mode isn't present from the onset - and why customers accept the lacking of such :(

vb6sp6 6y ago
Most people don't seem to care about data privacy
hashkb 6y ago
Because we're accustomed to American companies such as Google and every bank trampling on out privacy.
leetcrew 6y ago
it should be of particular concern to drone hobbyists. perhaps things have changed since I got bored of flying drones, but I recall it being very hard to operate a drone completely legally. the rules I knew of were themselves a pain to follow; the worst was the requirement to notify every helipad within five miles or so. at the time, I could use airmap to get a list of numbers for all the helipads in my area, but the listed numbers were often some random person's cell. even when I went through the entire list and dutifully called each number, I'm not 100% sure I fulfilled the legal obligation. I always wondered if I was in violation of any state/local laws I was totally unaware of. it seems pretty rare that any drone laws are actually enforced against hobbyists, but the penalties are pretty stiff. having flight data copied back to a remote server for authorities to pore over later seems like a pretty substantial risk.
- closetohome 6y ago
  DJI in fact advertises the fact that they'll happily broadcast your information to law enforcement in realtime - https://www.dji.com/aeroscope https://www.dji.com/aeroscope It's a little scary.
  - leetcrew 6y ago
    I concede they are in a tough and uncertain spot with so much drone regulation still up in the air. still, it's always gross to see a company enthusiastically aiding the prosecution of its own customers.

philips 6y ago

My take: DJI, Apple, Huawei, Google etc are all in a similar boat where the governments they operate under have publicly and privately pressured them to use their profitable platforms for spying or gathering evidence. This reduces their profitablity as consumers have less confidence the product isn't working against them. But in the case of DJI and Huawei and TikTok the US is more concerned about how those chinese companies erode US business like boeing, cisco or Facebook. And instead of saying it is primarily economic protectionism they make it a defense issue to try and tamp demand. In the end the best thing for consumers is if Apple, DJI, etc compete on having privacy preservation and feel compelled to make their products resistant to government influence. So this new DJI feature is a good thing for consumers it seems.

redis_mlc 6y ago
> My take: You're so wrong about saying this is not a national security issue. China has been in an undeclared war with the US for 40 years. You can learn more on the Youtube "China in Focus - NTD" channel. > feel compelled to make their products resistant to government influence. All Chinese companies are controlled by the CCP. What DJI wants is irrelevant. Each company in China over 50 employees has a CCP cell to monitor their obedience. Obligatory Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot
libertine 6y ago
While I agree with you, I think there's something that should be pointed out: China stance on foreign companies doing business in China. Currently China wants all the perks of the open global market, while closing it's own. I don't understand how this is allowed.
- vkou 6y ago
  China's market is not closed to foreign companies. This isn't 1990 anymore. American brands are everywhere in China, from Teslas, to iPhones, to McDonalds, to Starbucks, to the NBA, to the list goes on and on and on. Google, Facebook, Apple each make billions of dollars from China, every year. Calling that a closed market is... Not at all accurate. It's by no means a fully[1] open market, but it's not a closed one. [1] The definition of fully also varies from country to country. Is Canada a fully open market? No. For example, there's a lot of government protectionism surrounding media, and media infrastructure. Is the US a fully open market? No - again, not in the case of media infrastructure. Neither is an open market when it comes to food, or medical drugs. (For good reason, in my opinion - but that's just that - a political opinion. Other people have different opinions on this subject.)

hashkb 6y ago

The alliteration in the sub-heading is choice.

dellcybpwr 6y ago

Not that I need a drone.. but I've thought about one in the past.. and having to not only use their app but have it connected to the internet has been a big deterrent and thus far have not used one.

omgbobbyg 6y ago
I have a DJI Mini drone (which is awesome), I use it with a Google Pixel that has no internet connection (no SIM card and no WiFi) and it works fine.
- xeromal 6y ago
  I have a mini too. I have a samsung ultra that's way too big to fix in the controller so I use a dummy pixel 2 as well. Like you said, works great and I can keep it in my carrying case.
- alistairSH 6y ago
  Is that true for the larger drones? The Mini is light enough that it doesn't need approval to fly (in the US). The larger drones require approval to fly, which is often accomplished real-time within the control app. [I don't know if this is the case, just guessing/wondering if it is]
  - a_t48 6y ago
    That should be true unless you're near an airport.
  - grecy 6y ago
    I think the app figures out where you are based on GPS co-ords and lets you fly or not. That's what my mavic mini appears to do when I fly it with no internet connection. It will even pop up warnings like "airport flight restriction nearby" and it does that with no internet...
    - omgbobbyg 6y ago

wisemanwillhear 6y ago

> A code audit carried out by FTI Consulting was said to have revealed no causes for concern, with DJI posting the exec summary (but not the full audit) on its website as a PDF. It had access to 20 million lines of source code, according to the summary, with analysis focusing on code concerned with “communication protocols and network activity with host infrastructure”. DJI can pay for all the audits in the world, if they are not trustworthy they can find a way to spy in spite of the audit. Computer and software systems are just too complex to declare clean with audits. This is a trust problem that DJI simply cannot change in their present state.

xeromal 6y ago
Yeah, I think the only way to "kind of" verify would be to have the consulting firm build from source and have a drone be fully operable. Or run a public version inside a black box and monitor all traffic.
oh_sigh 6y ago
An audit means nothing if you have the ability to send and execute custom code to any device which uses your hardware. No one is going to audit an internet connected Windows 98 machine and say "Yup, no malware on here", and expect that to hold true for even a second after the statement was made.
onetimemanytime 6y ago
Is their software gonna be audited every time they do an update? Nope, so they can change it

awinter-py 6y ago

woo! dept of interior insisted on this, got a forked DJI OS, and did an expensive consulting round to verify that it didn't phone home looks like all it takes to negotiate privacy w/ a big tech company is a million+ procurement process and a trade war

mleonhard 6y ago
Can you share a link with more information on this forked DJI OS?
- awinter-py 6y ago
  yeah the dept of interior released a pdf https://www.doi.gov/sites/doi.gov/files/uploads/oas_flight_test_and_technical_evaluation_report_-_dji_uas_data_managment_assurance_evaluation_-_7-2-19_v2.0.pdf https://www.doi.gov/sites/doi.gov/files/uploads/oas_flight_t... they call it a 'government edition', if you search that term in the PDF the first few matches give some details

zaroth 6y ago

I have a DJI Mavic Mini and I was very impressed with the hardware and software overall. My kids and I have had a lot of fun flying this little drone! It does log every flight to the cloud, showing the telemetry logs of exactly where the drone flew and what it sent and received along the way (not full video, just telemetry). I find the logs extremely cool to look over after the fact when analyzing a flight. Their insurance program saved my butt when I lost radio contact when I flew the drone over to a friend's back yard, and had misconfigured the "return-to-home" altitude too low, so it promptly flew itself into a tree trying to get back to me. $30 to get a full replacement was a huge relief. It doesn't bother me much that they have a copy of my telemetry logs. I wouldn't want them to have copies of the video or pictures, and as I understand it those never leave the SD card. It would be nice to have a "local data mode", but on the other hand, their cloud service is also authorizing the flight envelope based on GPS coordinates, and it's important that the device doesn't let itself be flown into air traffic corridors and the like. Drones are a serious responsibility, and can be misused to cause a lot of damage, I'm totally willing to trade off some amount of tracking for the ability to have off-the-shelf access to this tech.

davinic 6y ago
> Drones are a serious responsibility, and can be misused to cause a lot of damage >I flew the drone over to a friend's back yard, and had misconfigured the "return-to-home" altitude too low You claim to understand the need for responsible drone ownership, yet in the same comment mention how you crashed your drone (luckily only into a tree) while violating clearly-stated FAA line-of-sight guidelines (and also not having understood the basic flight controls and recovery options). This is some serious cognitive dissonance.
- coldtea 6y ago
  What is the real cognitive dissonance is how "flew the drone over to a friend's back yard" is interpreted as some violation rule about line-of-sight guidelines -- or whatever this has to do with "not having understood the basic flight controls and recovery options".
- zaroth 6y ago

danboarder 6y ago

"A junior US defence minister, Ellen Lord, in charge of procurement, added to the aerospace magazine: “We looked at the fact that basically DJI from China had decimated our industrial base for small UAVs, quadcopters and so forth, through pricing that was sub-cost and so forth.”" This is so wrong headed. DJI is the Apple of small drones and basically created the category. I've used all competitors over the years including 3DR and Parrot and I suggest as an analogy that they are all Nokia style 'feature phones' compared to DJI's iphone line. That said, there is a healthy ecosystem of larger custom drones for industry as well as FPV drone companies that exist, again as analogy perhaps like the Linux ecosystem exists in the presence of Apple.

sneak 6y ago

Even DJI stuff that poses no risk whatsoever to health or safety, like their Osmo Pocket 4k gimbal camera, or their Osmo Action gopro-clone, require that you “activate” them, iPhone style, which logs at the very least your OS + IP (and thus rough location) + serial number to DJI. It’s bullshit. These are not internet-attached devices, they shouldn’t be spying on us. I’d love to see similar approaches to even domestically-made and domestically-hosted manufacturers and collection APIs.

coronadisaster 6y ago
> These are not internet-attached devices, they shouldn’t be spying on us. Should all internet-connected devices spy on us?

fuzzylearner2 6y ago

This new change is actually good for consumers though. One of the things that US government previously wanted was internet being necessary whenever you fly a drone. This data was also supposed to be sent to a third party picked by the government and they would hold this data for months. I think it was on the lines of remote id or something. Unrelated, but recently I finished an app for making recreational drone flying easy. Check it out https://dronetrails.app https://dronetrails.app or download the test flight app at https://testflight.apple.com/join/id9NkioE https://testflight.apple.com/join/id9NkioE

kube-system 6y ago

The headline here is clearly misleading some of the people in the comments. The proposed ban is on US federal government purchases of DJI drones. > “The US Congress is considering banning the US federal government from using foreign-made drones as part of its 2021 National Defense Authorization Act,”

tomc1985 6y ago

Why does it take threats of a national embargo to unlock functionality that should be present in EVERY device from the start?

dreamcompiler 6y ago

Why does a drone need 20 million lines of code? Windows 95 had about 15 million LOC.

vlovich123 6y ago
Probably runs Linux for all the device drivers, network stack etc.

cblconfederate 6y ago

It's like we have a new Colonial Era, where tech from various powers wants to loot the data of people around the world. This time it is different though, because unlike gold, you can duplicate data for free. So, in the end if everyone has everyone's data, is that valuable at all?

SergeAx 6y ago
When they say "data is a new oil", they also mean that it should be processed to maximize value.
- cblconfederate 6y ago
  an non-scarce asset cannot have high value. I guess thats why there's this "data protectionism" trend, though it will probably fail