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I doubt they care much about you taking some videos on holiday! Probably don’t use it to fly over military sites and there is zero risk. I worry that some of t

I doubt they care much about you taking some videos on holiday! Probably don’t use it to fly over military sites and there is zero risk. I worry that some of the worlds great companies get caught in the power wars of the US and China. Both countries working together has been so good for the world - nobody will be as prosperous without the other - but who cares as long as the powerful people in the US and China get to maintain or increase their power.

mint2 4y ago
With the apps the issue isn’t the ability of China to harvest data on someone at a kids sports events or what not or what basketball team they like. The issue is that for example with TikTok the American citizen/national with relatives has been watching videos on <sensitive topic> and now their relative back in China had a visit from the authorities, or this info gained from the app on this politician or journalists or their family could be used for leverage, or a number of scenarios like that. The chinese authorities already illegally sets up “police” stations abroad in various countries. The authorities already do apply pressure to relatives still in China.
bborud 4y ago
This is the beauty of a product like their drones that records detailed telemetry, and can upload video and images to their cloud service: you get loads, and loads of data that people with zero experience in intelligence gathering think is completely harmless. There really is no way of knowing how much sigint the drone is capable of gathering and sending back (it has an SDR chip). Just in the area I live there are perhaps a dozen military and strategic civillian installations. This is going to be true for any city. You'd be surprised how much civil infrastructure is at least somewhat classified. Because compromising it can have serious consequences. Some of these installations are even known to DJI and are geofenced off. In fact the DJI maps actually identify some military installations that are not identified on official maps provided by local providers. And both the maps and the geofences seem to be very actively maintained - much more so than the locally obtainable maps. But you can still get close enough to image a lot of these areas. The fact that they have an SRD on board, and because there are probably on the order of a couple of thousand DJI drones in the city, AND they phone home, you could get drones to do targeted scans depending on what area a drone is in. I'm not saying that they do this - but I am saying that all the things China would need to leverage DJI drones as a global network of intelligence-gathering assets are already there. The safest assumption is that they do leverage the drones for intelligence gathering. As for opportunities: Another good example is when there was a NATO exercise here last year. While down in the harbor to look at a US Marines ship (can't remember the name) that carries MV-22B Ospreys, I spotted what appeared to be a Mavic Pro of some description in the air. It probably wasn't the only drone trying to capture footage of the exercise. So yeah, exploiting naive users to unwittingly take part in intelligence gathering is a pretty neat trick. And it is a bit surprising that the regulations for this are so lax given the immense potential these platforms have.

mint2 4y ago

With the apps the issue isn’t the ability of China to harvest data on someone at a kids sports events or what not or what basketball team they like. The issue is that for example with TikTok the American citizen/national with relatives has been watching videos on <sensitive topic> and now their relative back in China had a visit from the authorities, or this info gained from the app on this politician or journalists or their family could be used for leverage, or a number of scenarios like that. The chinese authorities already illegally sets up “police” stations abroad in various countries. The authorities already do apply pressure to relatives still in China.

bborud 4y ago

This is the beauty of a product like their drones that records detailed telemetry, and can upload video and images to their cloud service: you get loads, and loads of data that people with zero experience in intelligence gathering think is completely harmless. There really is no way of knowing how much sigint the drone is capable of gathering and sending back (it has an SDR chip). Just in the area I live there are perhaps a dozen military and strategic civillian installations. This is going to be true for any city. You'd be surprised how much civil infrastructure is at least somewhat classified. Because compromising it can have serious consequences. Some of these installations are even known to DJI and are geofenced off. In fact the DJI maps actually identify some military installations that are not identified on official maps provided by local providers. And both the maps and the geofences seem to be very actively maintained - much more so than the locally obtainable maps. But you can still get close enough to image a lot of these areas. The fact that they have an SRD on board, and because there are probably on the order of a couple of thousand DJI drones in the city, AND they phone home, you could get drones to do targeted scans depending on what area a drone is in. I'm not saying that they do this - but I am saying that all the things China would need to leverage DJI drones as a global network of intelligence-gathering assets are already there. The safest assumption is that they do leverage the drones for intelligence gathering. As for opportunities: Another good example is when there was a NATO exercise here last year. While down in the harbor to look at a US Marines ship (can't remember the name) that carries MV-22B Ospreys, I spotted what appeared to be a Mavic Pro of some description in the air. It probably wasn't the only drone trying to capture footage of the exercise. So yeah, exploiting naive users to unwittingly take part in intelligence gathering is a pretty neat trick. And it is a bit surprising that the regulations for this are so lax given the immense potential these platforms have.