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
>Remote ID helps the FAA, law enforcement, and other federal agencies find the control station when a drone appears to be flying in an unsafe manner...
To be clear, I don't support this implementation of RemoteID proposed by the FAA, and I don't like that the DJI app doesn't allow granular control over permissions. I fully support the Feds' efforts in sanctioning DJI. However, I think it's important that we level reasonable criticisms at DJI for behavior that they're capable of changing.
It’s for the flight restriction system. Won’t let you fly near schools, power plants, airports etc.
Either way when using a drone they will know your location, but there's no reason to let DJI access this information when using every single product they make.
I'm not saying DJI isn't spying on everything but that's probably the reason. This is hilarious in hindsight because for years, you had to give an app call access so they could monitor if a call was incoming (for pausing a game for example)
Edit: It also looks to be a GDPR ban.
it's the opposite - anything that can read a signal that has been broadcast by another deivce requires location permission. which makes sense, because if you can poll for nearby wifi networks or bluetooth beacons you can determine location, even without using the GPS hardware.
Actually, for the new EU regulations, you need to broadcast both the position of the drone and of the operator, at least for everything above class C1 ("remote ID", see [1]).
And in any case, drones without working GPS are not fun to fly. DJI's Mini 3 Pro (and its larger friends) can do by using the collision-avoidance stereo cameras, but others I wouldn't dare risk running indoors.
Wondering if GPS on the drone would dramatically affect battery life as well?
In case of emergency, drones just land where they are, or they could try to go back to the point of origin. Depending on the emergency, the drone might lose connection with the operator, in which case your own location is not very useful. I didn't run into emergencies lately but usually as far as I know the operator sets out to retrieve the drone.
> Wondering if GPS on the drone would dramatically affect battery life as well?
The vast majority of consumer drones already have GPS (on the device) today.
> have also used a drone to follow me while on a bicycle or in a car
It's more likely the drone follows you with computer vision although GPS could potentially help if the drone completely loses you. I imagine your phone location will be more helpful in pointing out the general direction than actually getting you in the center of the shot. It's not that accurate, and there are more variables at play like the vertical angle.
Two GPS signals, two clocks, wireless signals being transmitted. You might be able to do a time differential offset/ correction to get a much higher accuracy relative position (drone and phone are very confident in their relative positions).
Wouldn't the app need GPS permissions just to show you where the drone is on a map, etc.?
How so? The drone can send its own location. The app might show you your location on the map, but that's not mandatory for operating a drone. It is a good user experience, I admit, but you can operate drones without this.
And it doesn't explain why phone stabilizers require location access. Tried it myself with the OM 5.
Thankfully Firefox on Android has the "reader mode" available right next to the url.
You were not kidding. Wow.
Aljazeera is a model of journalism excellence and integrity!
Is this about their cookie warning? They’re obligated to say something.
If you don’t take their journalism seriously, you deceive yourself!
There are really two versions of Aljazeera. The Western-facing one is pretty good (although it sometimes has Russia Today vibes on certain topics). The non-Western version is tabloid nonsense.
I might have been able to respond to this proclamation if I could find their damn website under all the popups and consent modals.
I'd imagine it would be important for "come back home" like functionality in case drone loses signal or whatever
> 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
App making photos or movies using GPS to tag location of the photo is kinda common. Refusing to work without it would be sketchy tho, but "developer is kinda incompetent" is common enough...
Not saying it isn't malicious but those are easier explanations.
Hell, it could require permissions and not send the data now, just add that tracking in update...
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.
But nothing lasts forever.
Establishing legible regulations, yes - but why should taxpayers fund drone companies? What is the public benefit in doing so?
At the moment, DJI's R&D is likely heavily subsidized by Chinese military funds. The result of that is that DJI can offer its products vastly cheaper than domestic (or allied nations') companies can.
Therefore, the public benefit of subsidies, tariffs and sanctions would be:
- not assisting China's military development by providing funds (from drone sales) and operational data from the drones. Even the flight logs provide immense amounts of real world data about the environment and the behavior - e.g. the Mini 3 Pro's camera based object tracking. That's crazy good AI at work there, gotta admit that.
- providing domestic and allied nations' companies with the opportunity to do business without being subject to Chinese price dumping, thus keeping wealth inside the allied space and outside of the CCPs cash reserves
- consumers have their privacy rights respected
In reality it will just end up funding a contractor with good lobbyists.
For some reason the EU is not seeking level playing field with China.
Opening tax payer funding for corporations willing to manufacture in the EU is an open season for corruption and display of hypocrisy.
The latter is actually a requirement in the EU starting Q1/23, simply because there have been way too many people without any clue about drone regulations causing danger to general and emergency aviation. It's a good idea when manufacturers step up to prevent their products from causing harm to others.
For instance, I recently started investing in an excitingly expensive hobby, night vision. The tubes in those things are so heavily restricted that I cannot even let a foreign national touch them, technically. Which makes it interesting considering my girlfriend is a Tunisian foreign national here on a work visa, so technically I cannot show her my cool new toys I spent thousands of dollars on.
My partner would be happy if I could not tell her or show her the cool stuff I work on :P.
They can't ban the hardware, of course. While in the US finding a Chinese part in military hardware is a reason to stop the line, they rely extensively on US parts.
(*PX4 on Hawk and Cube FCs is the best experience I've had.)
Not to be so cynical/dark, but I'm surprised to have not yet heard of a targeted assassination done by an amateur with an off-the-shelf drone. I have to admit the idea is frightening.
though yeah i think we should repeal that law, there is nothing wrong with civilians owning assault rifles. the federal government is literally not allowed to pass or enforce laws against this because it clearly infringes the individual right to keep and bear arms. we can only hope some time in the next few years the NFA, GCA and FOPA are struck down, along with all the asinine regulation that has forced so many small gun manufacturers out of business, increased gun prices for American consumers and retarded innovation in civilian small arms.
Drones in warfare are not new at all. Even the use of commercial drones is not new.
<< I can think of a few modifications to drones, I've yet to see in Ukraine, that could increase their lethality 10x.
I don't know this, but I suspect we are only seeing some rather selective footage ( as with most warfare propaganda ). Just thinking what one could do with coordinating drones makes me shiver a little.
Still, as a species we are oddly adaptable. Here is to hope permanent drone sky will not become our new normal.
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.
anyone know if DJI drone use prolific within China? How does China regulate their own drones?
Or I guess to put it another way, if you're dragnetting basically all possible user data from your citizens and non-citizens, wouldn't you assume "competing" countries are doing the same thing?
I mean, I get it, "poor put-upon China!", but let's be honest here: China needs to stop fucking around, lest they find out.
As another poster recommends, I'd suggest looking at Skydio.
With that said - yes, my drone is registered.
Doing business in China ain't as independent as you think, am afraid.
If someone goes to china and they get disappeared the Chinese government isn't going to tell anyone that they were taken let alone that it was because of data they got by surveillance of their mobile device.
