All android phone are definitely sending data to United States. Why is sending data to one country better than sending data to another?
For US citizens, this might be irrelevant (not so much if we go by the leaks). But for everyone living anywhere else on the globe, owning a smartphone means usually owning an endpoint for one of the giant corporate data sinks which its government can easily access.
I understand that it is the price I have to pay for a free (sic) OS and play services. But I use it because of a lack of viable libre and open alternative.
And I have about as much choice as someone in the market for a decent quadcopter unwilling to send data to China.
Considering that China has the great firewall due to it's government censorship I'm a bit shocked to see this as the top comment. The United States has distasteful problems with ubiquitous monitoring, but implying it is equivalent to China seems like failing to consider that there are qualitatively different levels of totalitarianism.
In a nutshell: DJI is primed to obey authorities. It's in their genes. They're happy to geofence your drone for the simple reason of, 'we were asked,' which means that it isn't your drone. Sure, it seems reasonable when they keep you from straying into an airfield, but just wait until they prevent you from filming the violent crackdown on a protest.
Although I do think that there's something to the idea of, 'if any country is going to have extremely personal data about me, it had may as well be a country that cannot easily and immediately imprison me without evidence or charge.'
The U.S. has strong legal protections against unreasonable search and seizure, as shown in the Apple vs. FBI case after the San Bernardino attack. My understanding is that China has no such privacy protections, either in principle or in practice.
Bad analogy with the quadcopter, plug a few cheap parts together and load the open source flight controller software and you are ready to fly. Much harder to build/compile a phone atm, I haven't even seen where this is possible without an inordinate amount of time and expertise.
Android phones are not widely used for surveying critical infastructure unlike these drones. The fact that a Chinese product sends data to China is hardly surprising, but US intel is warning that such a thing is dangerous considering what these drones are frequently used for.
And those Android phones are made by companies around the world. Samsung phones send data to South Korea, Hauwei to China, etc... Some Android phones are sold without Google's apps and send nothing to their servers, so you're not really correct on that.
The response to this issue, which was mostly news from August but is coming up again today due to the new probe, was that DJI decided to add an "offline" mode.
For every $1,000 drone bought from DJI, the military isn't buying a $10k+ drone from Raytheon or Lockheed-Martin. I'm sure that factors into this somehow ..
[+] [-] crappybird|8 years ago|reply
For US citizens, this might be irrelevant (not so much if we go by the leaks). But for everyone living anywhere else on the globe, owning a smartphone means usually owning an endpoint for one of the giant corporate data sinks which its government can easily access.
I understand that it is the price I have to pay for a free (sic) OS and play services. But I use it because of a lack of viable libre and open alternative.
And I have about as much choice as someone in the market for a decent quadcopter unwilling to send data to China.
[+] [-] GCU-Empiricist|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leggomylibro|8 years ago|reply
Although I do think that there's something to the idea of, 'if any country is going to have extremely personal data about me, it had may as well be a country that cannot easily and immediately imprison me without evidence or charge.'
[+] [-] astebbin|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DKnoll|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mmagin|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] octothorp3|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slackingoff2017|8 years ago|reply
And those Android phones are made by companies around the world. Samsung phones send data to South Korea, Hauwei to China, etc... Some Android phones are sold without Google's apps and send nothing to their servers, so you're not really correct on that.
[+] [-] jstanley|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Sir_Cmpwn|8 years ago|reply
In what universe is LineageOS not a viable alternative?
[+] [-] bolololo12|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prdonahue|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saurik|8 years ago|reply
https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/14/dji-adds-an-offline-mode-t...
[+] [-] irunbackwards|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abakker|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mmagin|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pjc50|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dovdovdov|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tobiasbischoff|8 years ago|reply