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.
I haven't been keeping up with the legislation updates, but the FAA's proposal for positional reporting required the drone to report the location of the drone and the pilot. It seems to still be their objective under "Why do we need RemoteID" https://www.faa.gov/uas/getting_started/remote_id/drone_pilo...
>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.
Some of DJIs drones are small enough that they wouldn't have to follow that rule (the pilot GPS requirement is only for drones that are required to be registered with the FAA, aka those heavier than 250g. DJI very intentionally has a line of drones that weigh something like 248g)
This point came up in another comment, and it's definitely reasonable - but I still don't see why DJI would require your location when using products other than drones, which they do. And as I noted before, they are providing an app which has been axed from the official store. Aside from this, as I'm sure you're aware, any information that DJI collect has a nonzero chance of being handed over the the Chinese authorities for any reason whatsoever.
If one wants to fly a drone in an unsafe manner they build a FPV drone themselves as opposed to buying an off the shelf regulated product with builtin geofencing.
> GPS might be helpful for drones (though it 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.
It’s for the flight restriction system. Won’t let you fly near schools, power plants, airports etc.
This might not be the best way to go about it because what you care about in this scenario is the location of the drone, not the operator, who might stand outside the no flight zone. Which is another reason to use the drone's GPS signal in the app instead of your phone location.
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.
On Android, anything that can broadcast a signal (bluetooth/wifi) require location, at least coarse.
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)
>anything that can broadcast a signal (bluetooth/wifi)
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.
> GPS might be helpful for drones (though it should be on the drone, not your phone)
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.
While this is interesting (broadcast to whom exactly?) my main point is that DJI demands access to your smartphone location even for products that clearly have no use for this information, while giving you a sideloaded app which is banned from the official store. To me, these point to a trust issue.
Wouldn’t the GPS on phone be primarily so that the drone knows where to go in case of emergency? I have also used a drone to follow me while on a bicycle or in a car…it seems like the phone would need GPS there as well.
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).
> GPS might be helpful for drones (though it should be on the drone, not your phone) but there is absolutely no reason to use it for something like a phone stabilizer
Wouldn't the app need GPS permissions just to show you where the drone is on a map, etc.?
No, it doesn't, since the drone will show you where the drone is. For your own location relative to the drone, it is though. You can do without, but just showing home (take off) location on the map is not ideal.
> Wouldn't the app need GPS permissions just to show you where the drone is on a map?
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.
fyi the aljazeera screenshot doesn’t show the dji article - just a cookie disclosure. Was the ‘ridiculous’ part in the article? Or their saying that the cookie gives “voice to the voiceless”. (Which is funny)
You can barely see the title behind the cookie popup and the "live" section, which is one of the worst examples I've seen for these annoying practices.
Thankfully Firefox on Android has the "reader mode" available right next to the url.
it's ridiculous that the propaganda arm of a totalitarian illiberal petrostate claims to "give a voice to the voiceless" or "promote truth and transparency". i also really dislike them because their "aj+" brand puts out heavily left biased faux-intellectual junk similar to vox or buzzfeed which makes me want to punch through a wall regardless of who puts it out.
>Aljazeera is a model of journalism excellence and integrity!
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.
>This is an important detail. Your phone location might be helpful when using drones (though GPS should be on the drone, not your phone)
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 "come back home" functionality relies on the GPS on the drone, but the "follow me while filming" needs the phone's. I saw quite a lot of motorcycling vlogs using that feature.
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.
Looks like parrot doesn't sell anafi anymore (only anafi ai which seems to be focused on enterprisey stuff), and skydio, while looking nice, is not foldable.
So if you want compact photo/video quad for trips, your choice is pretty limited. Especially if you want to stay below 250g weight. There is Autel Robotics which produces quads similar to DJI, but it's also mainland China company.
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
Taxpayers already fund them in the form of military spending. Now we need to encourage companies to trickle their decade old tech into the consumer space.
The thing is companies in the EU can't use slave workers and there is no access to cheap resources that are mined without regulations and so on.
But, big corporations are allowed to sidestep that by manufacturing in countries that don't care about that and so having huge competitive advantage over potential European manufacturers.
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.
Autel is “on par” - better in some areas and lacking in others. They’re a Chinese company, though some of their higher-end stuff is assembled in the US. They don’t “phone home” like DJI and don’t restrict flight based on geolocation in the US.
> They don’t “phone home” like DJI and don’t restrict flight based on geolocation in the US.
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.
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.
fr i don't think it's a coincidence that our market has been flooded by software-controlled chinesium. not to get too tinfoil-hatty but it makes sense from the chinese perspective.
We did that shit to ourselves with our offshoring and MBA bullshit. China just took advantage of it like any superpower would. America's commercial greed is what will cause it's downfall to China, if anything. Not that I even ascribe to the idea that China and the US should even be enemies, that's just more "red scare" BS.
What's not software-controlled these days? DJI has better products, consumers buys DJI, DJI is Chinese, consumer end-up with Chinese software, what's your point?
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.
I guess you have not been following the various EU rulings that say that EU citizen data must not flow to U.S. companies because it could be collected by U.S. intelligence services. “Google Analytics Ruled Illegal” would be a typical headline.
The US has ITAR. If you have certain government contracts you are prohibited from selling products or providing access to certain foreign nations (blacklists), or a complete export blanket ban.
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.
China has just about banned any foreign software services?
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.
We got some recent movements in trying to basically say "if it's US company it doesn't comply by GDPR", because US laws require companies to snitch on demand
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.)
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.
Some of the drones used by Ukraine have pretty wild so far, one ive seen rarely mentioned is this unknown larger drone that drops 10 grenades at a time, carpet bombing an area.
Both sides are purchasing these specific DJI drones in large quantities to be used by personnel on the ground to spot each other. It is a commodity not unlike binoculars were a century ago.
But the obvious difference is that binoculars were not sold with citizen from the other country attached who would stand near and occasionally would peer through and also report to office worker exact position of the binoculars owner AND also recite content of his personal notebook.
Quite difference isn't it?
Agree. But I think the idea of flying a bomb into someone's car (the first thing that came to mind when I thought about it for a few seconds) is, to the powerful, a whole 'nother level of terror.
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.
^^^ this comment was posted by someone who does not know what an assault rifle is. it is very difficult and expensive to get ahold of a assault rifle these days and has been for almost 40 years.
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.
They're certainly an optimal delivery device for biological and chemical weapons, and I imagine it's only a matter of time before such programs are revived by various powers, given the current breakdown in international treaty regimes governing what I'd call the four horsepeople of the apocalypse: nuclear, chemical, biological and cyber warfare.
How are they more optimal than the "traditional" (for the last few decades) method, a missile? Missiles have the advantages of bigger range, faster, different profiles (hypersonic cruise, ICBM). A drone might be harder to detect today, maybe, because anti-air systems didn't need to deal with them (while they did have to deal with missiles, so are optimised for that use case), but that's about it?
The past thirty years of offensive drones has shown the military power offensive drones. The US fields drones from the size of passenger aircraft to tiny little palm sized ones. It's also been firing missiles from them for decades now.
Drones in warfare are not new at all. Even the use of commercial drones is not new.
There is nothing to allow. The cat is already out of the bag. Best you can hope for is regulation, which is what FAA is attempting to do and mitigation ( some companies have ideas on how to counter 'bad' drones ). In a sense, it is no different than it was before. People can still drive cars. People can still use RC toys. And people will do all sorts of horrible things will all manner of technology.
<< 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.
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.
Readit News
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.
Deleted Comment
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.
[1] https://www.drohnen.de/20336/drohnen-gesetze-eu/
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.
Deleted Comment
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.
Deleted Comment
(*PX4 on Hawk and Cube FCs is the best experience I've had.)
https://twitter.com/uaweapons/status/1555657070245986309
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.
https://github.com/Parrot-Developers