Pentagon grounds own report that said China's DJI drones are safe

The United States Department of Defence (DoD) has reiterated that it thinks drones made by Chinese firm DJI represent a security risk after an internal document suggesting the opposite leaked to the press. The Pentagon expressed concerns about DJI's drones in 2019 – and with good reason. The firm's wares chat to servers in …

[Peter Galbavy]

"So, what recently aroused your suspicions around spyware?"

"Well, they pulled their app, DJI Fly, from the curated Google Play Store (while leaving others there and updatng) ande failed to explain why - instead requiring users to side-load the app via their own website and then requiring updates from iside the app."

[Anonymous Coward]

That's hilarious

This is the Pentagon we're talking about. Of course the US military cannot give China the huge propaganda victory of admitting their drones are better! So of course they'll never use DJI drones.

Somehow I don't think it came down to support for "Google Play Protect"!

Google Play isn't available in China, and its not available on Huawei phones worldwide anyway. Their one-size-fits-all solution is sideloading. Honestly I wish more people would do that, Mozilla in particular, you can't be pro-privacy and require users use an invasive Google tracking app.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: That's hilarious

We have always been at war with Eurasia Eastasia

[gandalfcn]

Re: That's hilarious

No we haven't. The Middle Kingdom was quite happy blundering along in imperial splendour and societal decay until around the 1830s, tnen the UK realised it couls[dnlt pay for the tea it wanted so sold opium. The Opium Wars followed. A bit like Colombian Drug Lords invading LA and demanding everyone in the USA get addicted to happy powder.

And then a few years later that chap Perry forced the opening of Japanese ports to American trade.

You reap what you sow.

[martinusher]

Surely you know by now not to take anything the Feds say seriously?

Trump was out and about at the weekend babbling about the routers used in polling places in the last election -- they have to have the routers because they're generating lots of votes and swinging the election (and so on). Its probably dawning on even the most stupid that the Dominion voting machines were not connected to anything so they are -- as we've been telling them -- merely ballot printers. So the next straw is the routers used to connect the clerks' laptops to the county voter database, the ones used to verify voter's signatures. (The ones were used were Crate devices, they were connected through the cell network directly to county.) So if you believe anything these politicians tell you you're in for a rough time when reality hits.

Its quite easy to monitor network traffic from a quadcopter to see what and who its talking to. You don't need the immense resources of the US government to do this and I'm pretty sure that if DJI had been interested in spying (any more than the normal commercial stuff we take for granted) then we'd have all known about it. Its just noise. The problem is that the 'merkan alternatives are not only nosebleed expensive but also are functionally deficient (they also use a lot of Chinese made components) so a couple of DJI devices were tentatively cleared for use by the government. They're needed for stuff like fighting wildfires, search and rescue and other sorts of things that don't permeate the typical politician/pundit's skull ("unless there's political capital in them thar hills, of course). Job #1 for the Feds should be "re-establishing credibility" and they're not going to do this by pretending that nothing's wrong.

[gandalfcn]

Re: Surely you know by now not to take anything the Feds say seriously?

Sadly. most of the GOP and its supporters believe Trump is god.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Surely you know by now not to take anything the Feds say seriously?

"They're needed for stuff like fighting wildfires, search and rescue and other sorts of things that don't permeate the typical politician/pundit's skull ("unless there's political capital in them thar hills, of course)."

Don't know much about governance in America, do you? Those functions (fighting wildfires, search and rescue, etc.) are City, County & State government responsibilities (even on Federal Land), not the Federal Government. City, County & State governments can buy all the DJI & Huawei stuff they want. So can corporations & citizens. There's a reason Huawei still has a big office in San Jose California, the heart of Silicon Valley. They & their products are not banned in the US, just the Federal government won't allow any of it's agencies to buy from them.

[gandalfcn]

Should be good for sales elsewhere then.