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Comment by deepGem | Hacker News Reader

DJI's response (a bit dated)

https://dronedj.com/2024/03/02/dji-response-drone-ban-us/

The allegations are so subjective that they sound like some middle schooler complaining to their mom.

“DJI drones are collecting vast amounts of sensitive data – everything from high-resolution images of critical U.S. infrastructure to facial recognition technology and remote sensors that can measure an individual’s body temperature and heart rate.”

DJI's response Technically, DJI suggests using drones for body temperature checks is unfeasible.

https://www.thedronegirl.com/2020/05/06/dji-coronavirus-dron...

US politicians have totally lost their minds to even propose something like this.

View on HN

Allowing a company that repeatedly violates basic app store rules and exports data to a country with adversarial interests unrestricted access to our infrastructure via drones is highly problematic.

This problematic situation extends in many ways to critical sectors of our economy, including agriculture, energy, defense, etc.

The data collected by these drones is extensive and sensitive. Crop data alone is crucial, and if this information cannot be controlled, it should not be exported.

This stance is not anti-China, but no country should permit unrestricted access to its airspace for surveillance.

Data is the new oil as well, especially with AI. These drone derived datasets are becoming critical path information.

How else can you control the information besides a ban? I LOVE DJI and have several of these drones. But I don’t know how I feel about this because of the problematic data issues. It’s complex and the situation is very difficult.

Its funny because app store rules aren't laws. If we were really concerned about privacy, we'd have our own strong GDPR that mandated privacy and control measures and controls. Banning things doesn't work because the base foundational protections aren't there.

The ability to abide by all store rules are not only legally enforceable contracts between companies — they are legal agreements after all — but a strong indicator of whether companies will abide by the normalized standards required to do business in an ecosystem.

Privacy protection is not the issue at the heart of these concerns: it’s national security.

Unconvincing tbh. Research papers have shown that heartrate can be tracked from cameras with well under 4k resolution. Doing it with DJI's excellent camera tech should be quite easy.

As far as US infrastructure, google street view and bing maps seem to be a bigger information disclosure threat but I guess they do blur out faces.

Google street view isn't going to be driving around sensitive government facilites or electrical infrastructure though - and you really can't guarantee no curious citizens will try to fly their dji drone over said facilities. So all DJI needs to do is put in an if(location == government_facility) and sit back and wait for the camera feed from some idiot american.

Agreed, but IMO the greater threat is smartphone apps. There are all kinds of AI photo and video manipulation apps and they have multiple ways to get precise location via gps, wifi, and photo metadata with the added advantage that many photos are taken both indoor and outdoors.

Seems like a ban on all those apps (not just tiktok) is more appropriate or at least required in addition. From a security POV, the restriction really needs to be at the iOS or AndroidOS level.

"Thermal imaging from the air has never been as easy as it is with the DJI Zenmuse XT."

https://www.dji.com/zenmuse-xt

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