from Hacker News

Pentagon Puts DJI on Blacklist

by stardenburden on 10/10/22, 12:38 PM with 188 comments

  • by magic_hamster on 10/10/22, 1:42 PM

    They are absolutely right to do this, and private users should be wary as well.

    DJI's application (Mimo) has been banned from the Android Play Store for some time, with no explanation given by DJI. They offer an APK to side load, which is completely unsupervised, and requires access to your phone's accurate location and other invasive permissions no matter which of their products you are using.

    This is an important detail. Your phone location might be helpful when using drones (though GPS should be on the drone, not your phone) but there is absolutely no reason to use it for something like a phone stabilizer, which it absolutely requires and will not let you continue unless you turn it on.

    I did not reverse engineer their application but I will be surprised if there isn't a copious amount of data being sent to the back office.

    You might not care as an individual, but then maybe ten years from now you will visit China, and they might know about you more than you're comfortable sharing.

    As a side note, Aljazeera is comically ridiculous: https://imgur.com/a/HnbLy4O

  • by mschuster91 on 10/10/22, 1:45 PM

    Now if there were any replacement for DJI I'd be happy... their tech stack is weird AF (e.g. you can only view synchronized flightbooks on your DJI RC controller or on the phone if you're using the sticks-only controller but not on the website or the macOS/Windows companion app, the damn expensive DJI RC controller doesn't do HDMI/DP output, the controllers can't be re-used between drone generations, DJI Fly is only available for sideload on Android ...).

    The #2 used to be GoPro with its Karma drone which is one hell of a beast of a drone, but they exited the market when it became clear that neither the US nor EU had any idea what they were doing regarding drone regulations (to this day the EU hasn't managed to publish the licenseable Standard Scenarios, there is exactly one drone model on the market that is classified under the new EU schema that will become mandatory Q1/23, obtaining permissions by individual restricted zones such as fire departments is a hot mess because no one there knows what to do, countries like Croatia theoretically ban camera drones without a completely intransparent special permit process...).

    Now, in the EU you're pretty much stuck with DJI if you want to fly in residential areas, hobby built drones and cheap China-made knockoffs that fall under the toy directive. For stuff such as gimbals, there are again virtually only DJI's Ronin series and cheap China-made knockoffs.

    Seriously the EU and US need to step up and establish or at least fund companies that can compete with DJI and other sanctioned entities. It's ridiculous that people have to choose between funding CCP associated organizations or cheap knockoffs that are riddled with quality issues, software bugs and license issues.

  • by 1-6 on 10/10/22, 3:51 PM

    Disappointed that grassroots drone companies such as 3DR died as a result of aggressive Chinese companies such as DJI pushing good quality drones for less. Now the US market has lesser alternatives and we’re having to go back to hobby kits to build anything similar to a DJI.
  • by z9znz on 10/10/22, 1:54 PM

    Do other countries put US hardware and software companies on blacklists for their involvement with DoD? If so, then I think quite a few major US tech companies would be unable to do business outside the US and Europe.
  • by sbf501 on 10/10/22, 7:58 PM

    That's a damn shame because DJI drones are years ahead of every open source project I've used: iNav, Beta/Butter/CleanFlight, PX4*, Ardupilot... Nothing compares to the stability and ease of use of consumer DJI drones. I mean, eventually another company will get there, but not right now.

    (*PX4 on Hawk and Cube FCs is the best experience I've had.)

  • by fasteddie31003 on 10/10/22, 1:57 PM

    The Ukrainian-Russo war has shown the military the power of offensive drones. You think they are going to allow civilians to own such powerful potential weapons in the future? I think offensive drone warfare is just scratching the surface. I can think of a few modifications to drones, I've yet to see in Ukraine, that could increase their lethality 10x.
  • by qwezxcrty on 10/10/22, 5:50 PM

    While I dislike DJI drones for theirs low hackability, I feel this is no sense as DJI's products are really very much civilian. And China do not ban iPhones or Windows because they are leaking a order of magnitude more Chinese bits (location services and telemetry) to the US controlled entities.

    Honest question: is there any competent alternative to DJI drones? Better to be more hackable. DIY a drone with open source flight control boards is not hard (for me), but optimizing for battery life and having a good video downlink seems hard.

  • by emehex on 10/10/22, 2:16 PM

    I've been looking for a non-DJI drone with a Swift SDK for a while. Does this exist?
  • by stephenitis on 10/10/22, 1:55 PM

    side question.

    anyone know if DJI drone use prolific within China? How does China regulate their own drones?

  • by adultSwim on 10/10/22, 5:06 PM

    I'm uncomfortable with kneecapping every successful Chinese technology company. "US tech good, China tech bad" doesn't make sense to me.
  • by RadixDLT on 10/10/22, 2:26 PM

    please look into https://www.parrot.com/us for dji alternative
  • by dijonman2 on 10/10/22, 4:49 PM

    I use a 5 year old app on an airgapped device along with old firmware on my drones for precisely this reason. It has no nanny features and allows me to be responsible for my own actions without surveillance.

    With that said - yes, my drone is registered.

  • by coffeeblack on 10/10/22, 1:23 PM

    Is there any non CCP replacement for their DJI Pocket2 camera?
  • by alexfromapex on 10/10/22, 4:48 PM

    Buy Skydio drones instead, they are made in USA.
  • by AdrianB1 on 10/10/22, 4:56 PM

    How does this impact Osmo Action cameras? I don't have one, but I guess it has some phone app (like all do), while still being able to function completely offline. Any information on this?
  • by simonebrunozzi on 10/10/22, 5:49 PM

    Stupid question, but this would be relevant for the market: if people can't buy DJI drones in the US, which drones would they buy? Recreational, sports, or industrial use.
  • by AnonMO on 10/10/22, 5:25 PM

    i'm honestly surprised dji never moved to singapore when basically all their revenue comes from the US consumer drone market.
  • by endisneigh on 10/10/22, 4:52 PM

    Haven’t been keeping up with this - have regular people been affected negatively by the privacy issue, ccp etc?