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Comment by blackeyeblitzar | Hacker News Reader

Good. Cameras all over the country potentially feeding images back to the CCP sounds like a huge vulnerability. I feel they should restrict drones already sold as well.

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The iPhones manufactured in China don't have this potential?

Ring cameras are also manufactured in China.

You do realize that is like 90% of every security camera that is bought on Amazon right now, right?

DJI drones aren’t even a drop in that bucket.

Cheap security camera data is very static and often only locally and temporarily relevant. Drones are often used to survey infrastructure; they provide information much more valuable and varied than a security camera.

Until recently, DJI drones stored some keyframes and flight records in the cloud by default. https://viewpoints.dji.com/blog/dji-to-disable-flight-record...

and just how are these consumer drones streaming the video to the CCP?

Dont ask these questions

-1: stationary security cameras are trivial to disable and can't do anything else(). Drones can disrupt supply chains and snarl traffic, among many bad things.

() true, all IP-connected devices can be launching-points for other attacks.

Are DJI drones autonomous?

Major Chinese security camera brands like Hikvision and Dahua have also been banned from critical infrastructure. They can be at least isolated at network level; more complex devices like drones usually require cloud connection to function.

DJI drones[0] don't require any network connectivity at all to function, much less "cloud"

they do have a "video platform" where you can upload videos to from their drones, but i've never used it and doubt i even have an account on it.

[0] none of the ones i've used or seen, anyhow

Functionality is crippled when using without a smartphone, and when you use it with a smartphone app, it acts as a proxy that provides network access. Collecting data on the smartphone and uploading it during firmware update or other network actions is trivial.

the phone i use with my DJI does not have network access so i am not sure what you're talking about. It does have an OLED screen so i can actually see it outside, but no sim card and where i fly it there's no wifi either.

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