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Comment by Fb24k | Hacker News Reader

Stuff like this is is part of the reason the US DoD banned DJI drone usage in 2020, looks like the ban will likely extend to all federal agencies this year: https://www.govtech.com/em/emergency-blogs/disaster-zone/fed...

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It is pretty standard stuff to obfuscate your code when you distribute your app to a phone to protect against decompiling and sometimes just to save space.

It's also pretty standard stuff to obfuscate your code when you're doing something dirty. The problem with obfuscation is that, for the end user, there's not a great way to determine which use case the developer had in mind which means one should probably approach such an application with extreme caution.

It's user-hostile no matter what the intentions are. In an ideal world, the market would punish companies that treat their own users as attackers.

How is it user-hostile to obfuscate your source code? It doesn’t change the user experience, just makes it more difficult to reverse engineer which would be against the EULA anyway.

Most anti-reversing clauses in EULAs wouldn't get past a court because of public policy concerns (i.e, recovering the systems/methods/algorithms used by an app is a legitimate form of competition and we don't want copyright or contract law to get in the way of that)

mommyyy dji didn't upload their source code to github so we could clone it then ban them on the grounds of national security, mooooom!!1

I'm sure TSMC also not bringing their latest node tech to their US fabs also happens to be because they're doing something dirty! oh wait, corporations want to protect their IP, and countries have time and time again proven that they're willing to enter the private business to give their country an edge.

Most of the kinds of obfuscating DJI is doing make the app take up more space.

That ban wouldn't be lifted if DJI rrleased all their source code, showed their belly and wagged their tail.

I mean, the central point is straight where everyone's focusing:

> But broadly speaking, U.S. drone makers say they expect to see a sales bump this year even though the new ban on federal purchases is not yet in effect.

The actual reason is jingoism, regardless of excuse.

Oh come on. It definitely couldn't be that it's surveillance technology produced in a country known on a massive scale for stealing information via electronic means, especially against the US, right?

Your statement reflects little knowledge on US national defense matters, shows a lack of knowledge about the technology, ignores recent historical knowledge of China's hacking efforts against the US, and provides zero information to back up your claim.

>a massive scale for stealing information via electronic means

You mean the NSA?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shadow_Brokers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equation_Group

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM

Surely we apply the same level of scrutiny to everyone right? Don't pretend that this is about China being a bad actor in the space. Everyone is a bad actor here, and arguably the NSA is worse.

I'm not trying to say DJI shouldn't be banned for government applications. It definitely has a hardware kill switch back home. But let's not pretend that facebook et al + Google + Apple are any different.

> But let's not pretend that facebook et al + Google + Apple are any different.

Were we pretending this? Was anyone pretending this? It would likewise be quite wise for China to ban the use of products made by these companies in their own sensitive federal applications, and my understanding is that broadly, they have.

Literally nearly everybody is pretending this, look around man.

Sure, but how does that address GP's point tho?

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