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US May Ground Civilian Drone Fleet Over China Spy Fears

The Chinese product ban has already affected closed circuit video, the government having banned Hikvision and other Chinese manufacturer's equipment from government installations. This has not affected civilian use, and I doubt would happen.
 
They must think that they are not competent enough to evaluate the hardware and software of a Chinese electronic device for back doors, and can't find a company that is. I know that Apple has an entire staff whose sole job it is to audit their Chinese-manufactured stuff for hacks.
 
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So if some one hacks your drone does that mean they take control and fly it away from you. Then what they look at mostly bad and some good video that you shot of the church,field,house,creek,train track,street,river,bay,creek,hill,valley near where you live ?
I don’t get it ? Please enlighten ....

Quebecnewf
 
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I think the issue is if DJI has 70% of the market share and a lot of drones are used by Federal agencies. If a foreign government (China) has access to the video of the drones used by the US government, they can see what the government sees, and know what the US government is interested in. That is valuable information to a competing power. It may seem trivial to most, but there are gold nuggets of data in what may be terabytes of useless video. That's how electronic intelligence works.

The question is, is it a real threat.




.
 
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So if some one hacks your drone does that mean they take control and fly it away from you. Then what they look at mostly bad and some good video that you shot of the church,field,house,creek,train track,street,river,bay,creek,hill,valley near where you live ?
I don’t get it ? Please enlighten ....

Quebecnewf
?
 
I think the issue is if DJI has 70% of the market share and a lot of drones are used by Federal agencies. If a foreign government (China) has access to the video of the drones used by the US government, they can see what the government sees, and know what the US government is interested in. That is valuable information to a competing power. It may seem trivial to most, but there are gold nuggets of data in what may be terabytes of video. That's how electronic intelligence works.

The question is, is it a real threat.

Given you can put your controller/phone into flight mode and still fly, then securely download any imagery or whatever from the memory card, and that you can download firmware updates for offline application as well, there's absolutely no need for a drone to ever be either directly online or connected to a device that is. There is a corner case where a foreign operative using something like Aeroscope might be able to eavesdrop on Drone-RC comms while a drone is in operation, but that would entail being within range (possibly extended via the use of a parabolic antenna) of the drone and/or RC.

I'm going to go with a "No" on your question, unless you are either A - incompetent, or B - routinely doing flights over sensitive locations that are within maybe 10km of adjacent publically accessible land. Both of those scenarios probably do apply to government agencies and their sub-contractors though, so while for most of us this should be a non-issue, it's definitely a valid concern to a small number of operators.
 
Guess where the US get most, if nor all, the printed circuit boards and chips for their military hardware.
Perhaps the powers that be should direct their paranoia a little closer to home!
 
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I keep thoroughly testing my DJI for "spyware" - I keep shouting "go get a pineapple fried rice from the local takeaway" - so far no reaction sadly. :(
I do fear for the sanity of some Beijing tech who's trying to decipher all my Welsh texts tho :) - should keep him busy for years.
 
The goal of the car dealership is to make money off of consumers that walk into their lot. The goal of spy analysts is to determine how the enemy will spy on you without your knowledge. Logic would have it that you, unless you are part of the team or your professional job is a relating to spy technology and potential security breaches, do not have enough experience or knowledge from your Internet resources to know the full potential of foreign technologies on our soil or airspace.

Everything else is just talking points pandering.
 
Guess where the US get most, if nor all, the printed circuit boards and chips for their military hardware.
Perhaps the powers that be should direct their paranoia a little closer to home!

Not boards. I design them for military, I know. Many chips are made in pacific rim, e.g. Malaysia, but I don’t recall any from fabs in China.

Now, assembly is a different thing. Loads of assy in China. Still, not military.
 
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