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stef25 998 days ago

Not so long ago there was a post / comment here that said Ukraine's going through around 10K DJI drones per month

rofrol 998 days ago

Link?

proxysna 998 days ago

They still use mostly DJI drones by burning an older firmware and using an anonymizer to hide takeoff and pilot's position from a potential aeroscope. DJI's are pretty cheap and really good at what they are doing.

snypher 998 days ago

>They're beaming back home whatever they want

This claim is always thrown out like a life preserver without ever anything to back it up. Do you have anything to support this claim?

foota 998 days ago

They're cloud based, aren't they? So regardless of what they're doing with the data, it's true that they're (figuratively) beaming it back, although parent is admittedly implying more.

I accept that chinese authorities generally have access to anything they want to in the country, so I would buy that they have access to drone data.

guax 998 days ago

They're not cloud based as far as I would define it. I have one and fly mostly on areas where there is no internet signal. The drone beams back video to your phone and unless you're syncing the cache videos with their cloud nothing its stored other than flight meta data. You can avoid even that by using a totally offline controller/phone.

foota 997 days ago

How does the drone communicate with the phone?

TheHappyOddish 997 days ago

Via the remote over RF.

hackernewds 998 days ago

with how they are executing tick tock and making a mockery out of the USDS system, I would not put this past them at all

lm28469 998 days ago

> I accept that chinese authorities generally have access to anything they want to in the country

So just like the US ?

localplume 998 days ago

nope. the US doesn't have the same military-civilian fusion that China has, given the latter is an authoritarian one party state.

Given the history of China and its tech companies, the burden of proof shifted to their shoulders.

So, I turn to them: is there anything that proves its a surveillance-free device? No, they cannot assure that.

Someone may not like it, but China now has a very, very bad reputation among people in the West. Especially after the last pandemic and how they handled it.

WendyTheWillow 998 days ago

Horse shit. If you can’t show specific data traffic flowing from Mavic software back to China that could conceivably be drone footage, this claim is bogus and borderline libelous.

It would be trivial to prove this to be true, and there is zero of that proof. Hell, at this point it would be valuable to even see small phone homes by Mavic software from the last year, but I doubt you even have that.

There are plenty of other reasons not to buy this drone, so the lies are completely uncalled for.

You are looking at a simplistic perspective.

Surveillance doesn't always run 24/7 for every device. The signal/noise ratio would be extremely low.

To keep a high ratio, it's selectively switched on for high interest targets.

There's no reason for a drone flying on my backyard to send any data to China. Their privacy protection is inexistent. You can ask it to be conceivably whatever horse shit you like, I don't care. I don't want any bytes sent there.

WendyTheWillow 998 days ago

Nothing simplistic about asking for evidence that this is occurring. Yes it’s not easy, but without evidence you’re spewing speculation, and when you claim speculation as certainty it ventures into the realm of bull shit.

1. https://www.google.com/search?q=ccp+chinese+tech+surveillanc...

rmbyrro 997 days ago

There's plenty of evidence that the CCP forces Chinese tech businesses to do surveillance:

The word you're trying to find is not "speculation", but "suspicion":

1. a feeling or thought that something is possible, likely, or true.

2. cautious distrust.

You may like China or think there's no difference between the US and China. But saying there's no reason to be suspicious of a Chinese device is putting you in the realm of unreasonable...

> So, I turn to them: is there anything that proves its a surveillance-free device? No, they cannot assure that.

Can Google and Apple prove that their stuff is surveillance-free, though?

No, but US reputation is way better than China's.

In the absence of a surveillance-free device, people prefer the one with the better rep.

mardifoufs 998 days ago

>us reputation is way better

Where? Maybe in the west, certainly not in the rest of the world. China didn't start a war that killed 1million people not even 20 years ago. Westerners don't care about that but that's to be expected.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine

rmbyrro 997 days ago

You are right, Chinese govt didn't kill only 1 million.

The US military complex is beyond dirty and its grip on govt power makes everyone sick in the West and the East.

But reducing the US to that and then doing a comparison with the Chinese government and ideology is unfair, in my opinion.

WitCanStain 998 days ago

No, because it isn't.

PeterStuer 998 days ago

Replace 'China' with 'USA' in your post, and for most of the world both would be identically true.

The thing is: a lot of people want to live in the US. That's not true for China.

Have you ever been to China and the US?

You may think they're equally awful, but a LOT of people disagree.

China's reputation is in really bad shape among people in the West. Despite also being under surveillance, that's why many prefer American or European tech.

thombee 997 days ago

Not saying it's all of it, but could some of this reputation be from propaganda and attempts to smear chinese tech? Seems like a pretty common MO from the USA

guax 998 days ago

After Snowden, can you affirm that any US tech company is safe to use as a non us citizen? Or even one in some cases.

I'm not saying US tech companies are surveillance-free.

What I'm saying is China's reputation is way, waaaaay worse than the US' among people in the West, in general.

That's why they prefer American or European technologies and products.

kortilla 998 days ago

Does the app function without an encrypted connection to DJI controlled servers?

If so, then there is nothing else needed. People forget how sketchy closed source software is.

trailbits 998 days ago

You can turn off all the phone radios or you can block all network traffic and the app still works fine. You only need a connection to get an unlock code in certain airspace.

okdood64 998 days ago

While I myself still wouldn't ever use DJI because of this reason, no can ever provide any concrete claim. Quite hilarious.

corbezzoli 998 days ago

What concrete claim are you looking for? Is it not enough that Huawei was banned by the US? Do you know the reason why it was banned? The same reason could broadly apply to every Chinese company. TikTok is the software counterpart that isn’t allowed on any government phone.

DJI does not produce infrastructure pieces so it hasn’t reached the same urgency to the US, so it’s still allowed.

cf141q5325 998 days ago

> Is it not enough that Huawei was banned by the US?

They are in an economic war and are competing about whose spyware people use. I dont see how given that you can take this as a sensible metric.

Not arguing against your main point though, your line of reasoning is just flawed. The US would have reason to behave like this even if Chinese spyware wasnt a threat.

PeterStuer 998 days ago

Huawei was starting to be a serious player in 5G, and their handsets were eating Apple's lunch.

US understandably wants their spyware in the world's infra. The rest of the planet might not see it that black and white.

hackernewds 998 days ago

at this point then NULL hypothesis should be that China is using consumer grades products to spy on its perceived enemies including the USA.

Since Snowden it's pretty clear that the USA is spying on even its citizen. I don't see how it would be surprising that China does something similar.

> Do you know the reason why it was banned?

For the infrastructure, for legit strategic reasons (without even considering they are abusing it, you generally don't want to rely on foreign infrastructure on your territory).

For the smartphones, that's pure commercial war. Huawei was a big competitor.

corbezzoli 998 days ago

> For the smartphones, that's pure commercial war. Huawei was a big competitor.

Big competitor of what? There’s no popular Android phone OEM in the US. Sounds like you’re making stuff up.

To... Apple. First time I heard about a Huawei ban of smartphones was also the year where I heard that Huawei was about to sell more than Apple in the US, if I remember correctly.

Many people around me liked Huawei because they were seeing it as the Android brand that "is closest to Apple".

> Sounds like you’re making stuff up.

Don't get me wrong: I am not part of the US government and I was not part of the official decision. I'm just sharing my opinion :-).

p_l 998 days ago

US vendors slept on 5G, and Huawei prepared end-to-end gear, from backend systems through antennas to handsets. This resulted in Huawei getting a lot more deployment in 5G, and triggered less than open retaliation. The handsets themselves were minor issue compared to possibility of China eating US' lunch on 5G.

https://www.canalys.com/newsroom/canalys-global-smartphone-m...

em500 998 days ago

Huawei was on a trajectory to become the biggest smartphone vendor in the world, when they were kneecapped in 2019, mostly by blocking their access to Google services (which cratered their sales outside of China).

firen777 998 days ago

How do Ukrainian operators avoid exposing their own positions? Do they install custom firmware on their drone?

guax 998 days ago

You can operate the drones without a connected device. Operator location is done by locating the radio source. It would be better to have repeaters and cable transmitter to them to avoid direct strike.

Tech people are usually paranoid by the most unlikely scenarios. A soldier with an antenna can pinpoint the operator location much easier than trying to get this kind of info from china without leaks.

dilyevsky 998 days ago

Yes they root the device and set operator coordinates to 0,0 so they are not picked up by aeroscope, etc

ramraj07 998 days ago

Its not impossible that DJI could have failsafe phone home systems in there that'll still send info back home after rooting. My guess is that the products they produced before the Ukraine war were more naive and now that they've learnt consumer drones will be used in warzones no matter what, I'll bet they have started incorporating such failsafes. Imagine being able to know where every mavic in the frontlines are and selling that info to the Russians.

brindlejim 997 days ago

jailbreaks.

WendyTheWillow 998 days ago

Good luck using my backyard data to fight in Ukraine…