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Drone Maker D.J.I. May Be Sending Data to China, U.S. Officials Say

nytimes.com

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Re: Drone Maker D.J.I. May Be Sending Data to China, U.S. Officials Say

#61

Post by godelski »

justinjlynn wrote: post #47
GCU-Empiricist wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering that China has the great firewall due to it's government censorship I'm a bit shocked to see this as the top comment. The United States has distasteful problems with ubiquitous monitoring, but implying it is equivalent to China seems like failing to consider that there are qualitatively different levels of totalitarianism.

As though the invasion of privacy might be acceptable depending on who's committing the act... and how much or how often they do it and for what reasons. If it unjust, it's unjust; it doesn't matter if its China or any of the Five Eyes members doing it, it's still just as wrong.

I definitely disagree with this. I'd change af's analogy though. There is a difference between someone breaking into your house and looking around and someone breaking into your house and confiscating things. Neither are good, they are just different degrees of bad.

Re: Drone Maker D.J.I. May Be Sending Data to China, U.S. Officials Say

#62

Post by ceejayoz »

flavio81 wrote: post #6
wmf wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't DJI drones the best? The military applications of quadcopters seem obvious.

Quadcopters are in the lower tier of all drone types. Fixed-wing drones are more suited to military applications due to greater range and payload capacity, not to mention speed.

> Fixed-wing drones are more suited to military applications due to greater range and payload capacity, not to mention speed.

Ah, yes. The same reasons the Army no longer uses any helicopters at all.

Re: Drone Maker D.J.I. May Be Sending Data to China, U.S. Officials Say

#63

Post by TaylorAlexander »

GCU-Empiricist wrote: post #44
crappybird wrote: post #10

All android phone are definitely sending data to United States. Why is sending data to one country better than sending data to another? For US citizens, this might be irrelevant (not so much if we go by the leaks). But for everyone living anywhere else on the globe, owning a smartphone means usually owning an endpoint for one of the giant corporate data sinks which its government can easily access. I understand that…

Considering that China has the great firewall due to it's government censorship I'm a bit shocked to see this as the top comment. The United States has distasteful problems with ubiquitous monitoring, but implying it is equivalent to China seems like failing to consider that there are qualitatively different levels of totalitarianism.

I don’t fully understand your argument. Because China has the great firewall they’re worse? I don’t really see how the firewall relates to surveillance in this way. I agree the firewall is a human rights issue in the way that US prisons are a human rights issue, but I’d be hesitant to say that because China is bad in this one way, the fact that they perform surveillance is made worse. The US is the global leader in surveillance as far as I’m aware. We keep 0-day backdoors in computer hardware that was designed here, and there’s some uncertainty as to whether we arranged for those backdoors or only found them (NSLs make it difficult/impossible to know).

Further you dismiss the parent comment as implying the US and China’s surveillance are equivalent, but I don’t see that as the claim. There is a lot of shocked surprise in the news when we find that China is doing something we don’t like with our data or computers, but we ignore that the NSA builds massive data centers for data on the global population, we kill people based on that data, and we also engage in a global hacking war. And I think it’s important to make sure that when we talk about China, we’re also willing to talk about the US. If we never talk about what we do, someone else’s bad behavior will look warped.

The US and China are not equivalent, but it’s hard to talk about one fairly in this context without mentioning the other.

Re: Drone Maker D.J.I. May Be Sending Data to China, U.S. Officials Say

#64

Post by giobox »

astebbin wrote: post #11
crappybird wrote: post #10

All android phone are definitely sending data to United States. Why is sending data to one country better than sending data to another? For US citizens, this might be irrelevant (not so much if we go by the leaks). But for everyone living anywhere else on the globe, owning a smartphone means usually owning an endpoint for one of the giant corporate data sinks which its government can easily access. I understand that…

The U.S. has strong legal protections against unreasonable search and seizure, as shown in the Apple vs. FBI case after the San Bernardino attack. My understanding is that China has no such privacy protections, either in principle or in practice.

San Bernardino did demonstrate this to some degree, but I could easily have imagined that event pushing Congress to pass some pretty draconian legislation if the FBI hadn't found an alternate path into the phone, things got pretty heated with that one. I'd go as far as to say the surprisingly tough public stance Tim Cook took against the government's position was pretty unusual too.

I would be worried about what would happen if a similar highly public spat over an encryption issue happens under the current US administration - it's abundantly clear that the politics of this issue and the facts are not in alignment, Trump would doubtless adore the publicity of it. At any rate, I'd imagine San Bernadino is almost certainly not the last time this is going to be a national political issue, in the USA or elsewhere.

This of course pales in comparison to China though.

> The U.S. has strong legal protections against unreasonable search and seizure

So long as you stay the hell away from an airport...

Re: Drone Maker D.J.I. May Be Sending Data to China, U.S. Officials Say

#65

Post by mmagin »

crappybird wrote: post #10

All android phone are definitely sending data to United States. Why is sending data to one country better than sending data to another? For US citizens, this might be irrelevant (not so much if we go by the leaks). But for everyone living anywhere else on the globe, owning a smartphone means usually owning an endpoint for one of the giant corporate data sinks which its government can easily access. I understand that…

Nice use of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

Re: Drone Maker D.J.I. May Be Sending Data to China, U.S. Officials Say

#67

Post by trhway »

wbl wrote: post #52
trhway wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The U.S. has strong legal protections against unreasonable search and seizure i don't think these protections apply to the people outside of US. The same way whatever laws China has wouldn't apply to for example the people in US, ie. outside of China. Also it reminded about that typical arrangement when UK spies on the people inside US at the request of US government and vise versa in order to workaround those domes…

That last part doesn't happen: it's part of the intelligence agreements not to do that.

That agreement is to not to spy on each other against each other's will. That is completely different from spying on each other's domestic targets at each other's request/will to workaround domestic no spying and privacy protections laws.

Re: Drone Maker D.J.I. May Be Sending Data to China, U.S. Officials Say

#68

Post by wbl »

kuschku wrote: post #54
wbl wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That last part doesn't happen: it's part of the intelligence agreements not to do that.

The snowden leaks, 4 years ago, offer proof that this happened, and you still deny it? Officials of the BND admitted it in a parliamentary hearing, too.

What proof did Snowden show of this?

Re: Drone Maker D.J.I. May Be Sending Data to China, U.S. Officials Say

#69

Post by wbl »

trhway wrote: post #67
wbl wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That last part doesn't happen: it's part of the intelligence agreements not to do that.

That agreement is to not to spy on each other against each other's will. That is completely different from spying on each other's domestic targets at each other's request/will to workaround domestic no spying and privacy protections laws.

Explain how anyone would think that works. You can't get around the 4th amendment by directing someone else to violate it.

Re: Drone Maker D.J.I. May Be Sending Data to China, U.S. Officials Say

#70

Post by GCU-Empiricist »

GCU-Empiricist wrote: post #44
crappybird wrote: post #10

All android phone are definitely sending data to United States. Why is sending data to one country better than sending data to another? For US citizens, this might be irrelevant (not so much if we go by the leaks). But for everyone living anywhere else on the globe, owning a smartphone means usually owning an endpoint for one of the giant corporate data sinks which its government can easily access. I understand that…

Considering that China has the great firewall due to it's government censorship I'm a bit shocked to see this as the top comment. The United States has distasteful problems with ubiquitous monitoring, but implying it is equivalent to China seems like failing to consider that there are qualitatively different levels of totalitarianism.

To clarify, sorry too many people to reply to: I don't like surveillance. Stepping away from any tribal loyalty I might have to the five eyes I think you can qualitatively state that China is objectively a more totalitarian state hostile to the hacker ethos/freedom/pick your term for the terminal value most of us seem to agree on, which is what I was getting at with the great firewall. I am less worried about these less(least?) bad states collecting data then I am about the worse super-power doing so.

Edit: to->too d'oh

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