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Comment by lazide | Hacker News Reader

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.

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.

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?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com