This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Interesting that there's more outrage in the media at the UAVs being Chinese, than there is at the police using UAVs to spy on people.
I mean...if you think that UAVs will help police spy on you then you're just paranoid. They don't have time for that, and even if they did they would just be more blatant since they have that right.
"but we want domestic spying only!"
"A Chinese company banned in four states"... they could have just said DJI, i.e. literally the biggest consumer drone market in the world with about 70% market share.
California LEO and 107 pilot here. Just about every UAV program I know of has DJI products in their fleet. Our fleet is 100% DJI currently. The officer quoted is right, other companies can't beat the price and quality of DJI drones.
Have you considered that they are cheap for a reason? There is no secret to building quality components, it just costs more. DJI is able to produce better quality for a lower price, and it ships with free proprietary firmware. Pay no attention to those encrypted packets scurrying off to who knows where.
That doesn't appear to be a thing.
Their security seems to be a bit flaky though.
Here's the problem with these things... Even if it's not a thing right now, are you 100% certain it won't be a thing at some point in the future?
Electronics can very easily contain code, or outright hardware that changes after a set time or when given a signal.
It's the equivalent of having an agent of a foreign dictator and hostile power working as part of your police force. You don't know when it's going to turn, maybe it'll never move against you, but it's loyalties are elsewhere.
There is no secret to building quality components, it just costs more
Savings due to mass-production, low wages, etc can translate into money invested in better components. Experience in the industry can also lead to more efficient designs.
That doesn't make them a "good" company but it also doesn't mean that cheap=spyware
Ultimately I'm not in charge of purchasing the drones. We can make suggestions but the decision comes from admin. Generally speaking we purchase our drones through a grant, so money isn't unlimited. A lot of the top drone manufacturers are Chinese owned. We are on track to purchase a BRINC drone, which is a US based manufacturer.
I'm not a fan of DJI products needing a firmware update for the batteries, the controller, and the drone itself. In the end there hasn't been any evidence of data being sent to China or that these updates are somehow malicious.
Until Congress or the state bans DJI, LEAs are going to keep choosing the cheapest, most effective option.
This is my favourite season of The Wire
It's like when USA police agencies only bought Harley Davidson motorcycles because it was politically correct to source equipment from domestic sources. Once they realized what over-priced and poor performing machines they are, they gave up on the idea and went to foreign sources.
Personally I think the taxes we pay to support government organizations should go toward domestically sourced equipment. They should be supporting the local economy, but it's so one sided now they don't really have a choice. However with some industries it can be a slippery slope. There was a recent USA ban on telecom equipment from Huawei related to this.
I don't think this is an economic decision. Chinese companies have been caught putting malware and spyware into their hardware. Not all of them of course, but a couple. Lenovo did it, and they're probably the most well known.
For consumer goods, that's probably fine. No one cares if China spies on grandma. But for law enforcement, we really don't want to be using spy bots.
