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DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

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541–550 of 742 posts

Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#541
post #28

DJI is, by far, the best drone equipment brand for photography, industrial usage, etc. It's disheartening to witness the US embracing protectionism for high-tech. If the United States does this, it might as well join the European Union's decadence in killing tech startups by stifling the competitiveness of their market...

All Xi has to do is stop barreling towards an invasion of Taiwan. The U.S., Europe, and Japan need to create and enhance a drone industrial base before China invades Taiwan. By the time it has invaded, creating the industrial base will be too late. Also, China has created DJI through government-sponsored industrial policy, not via open markets.

the roots of silicon valley are in the decades of military contracts, initially, i.e. in the "government-sponsored industrial policy" https://youtu.be/ZTC_RxWN_xo?t=3546

Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, a…

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.

Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#543

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 temperatur…

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

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

Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To start: I do not trust the CCP, but my trust in the American legal system has been waning. What's the legal recourse for a US Citizen served with a dodgy FISA-related subpoena/warrant? Or if a government agency wants to purchase tracking data that includes my phone from a data collection agency? Say the state of Texas purchases geotracking data for app users who cross state lines.

Apple famously told the FBI to go pound sand when asked to help access an iPhone in an actual terrorism case (i.e. it wasn't about going after dissidents or journalists or anything), even though such help was definitely within Apple's technical power. Now, while admitting that I am no way claiming the US is perfect, does anyone actually think something even remotely similar would ever happen between a Chinese company…

There is a good book on the American surveillance apparatus Means of Control by Byron Tau. People are a lot more watched than they think.

The Apple example is well-known because it is an exception. Much more common is not only compliance but making an entire business out of selling private data to the government.

https://theintercept.com/2022/04/22/anomaly-six-phone-tracki...

It really doesn’t matter that China is worse. It’s not a competition. The fact that people in other places have even less privacy doesn’t make me feel better.

Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#546
This protectionism is just getting ridiculous now. You can't ship most manufacturing jobs overseas and expect china not to out compete eventually. Yes they are stealing ip, who cares, japan did the same thing. Trying to stop in now is just going to cause another depression.

Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#547

As someone who has a DJI Mini what are the options for a consumer drone made by a US company? Everything on https://www.diu.mil/blue-uas-cleared-list is either widely different, 15x as expensive, not purchasable by civilians at all, or all of the above. Parret appears to have stopped selling their consumer model entirely. Skydio 2+ seems like the closest thing but it also no longer appears to be for sale either. All…

I'll build a drone for you with open source components if you are shopping for one, it will cost more than a DJI but less than these other options.

If you can do that at scale, it sounds like you have a viable business. There is clearly a demand for it.

Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#548
post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Longevity, happiness, health, leisure, life satisfaction Apart from longevity[1], everything else is subjective so do you have any evidence? From what I see based on a quick search, happiness level seems same in US/Canada vs Germany/France. eg. Rankings by this[2] measure: Canada(15), USA(23), Germany(24), France(27). Or scores by this[3] measure: Canada (6.9), USA(6.7), Germany(6.7), France(6.6) [1] Even longevity…

I’m sure Americans are dying healthy and happy at young age. Crunching the numbers until the fit the narrative aside, the chocolates are horrible too.

This is called handwaving away an inconvenient truth.

The highest HDI in the world is possessed by dozens of counties in the US. The lowest in the US is on par with... Poland.

Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#549
post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#550

I don't trust DJI. I was looking to replace my GoPro with the DJI Action, but their app was not on the Play-store. It can only be side-loaded on Android, because their app breaks a number of policies on privacy and data gathering. I believe I saw a site that decompiled their app and found a number of worrisome things.

> I believe I saw a site that decompiled their app and found a number of worrisome things.

Every Android in America is sold with a rootkit called Google Play Services and it can do absolutely anything on your phone. There is no limit to what Google Play Services can do on your phone unattended or clandestinely.

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