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US Interior Department To Ground Its Drones Over Chinese Spying Risk (cnet.com) 6
Officials worry that U.S. reliance on Chinese drones might be putting critical infrastructure at risk. They are concerned the drones may be sending information back to the Chinese government or hackers elsewhere to use for cyberattacks or other offenses. The Interior Department’s decision is one of the biggest responses yet and may be the only total fleet shutdown in the federal government. It is not coordinating with the White House or other federal agencies.
Quite the irrational panic (Score:4, Insightful)
What are the Chinese going to spy on here? Forrest fires? And how are they going to exfiltrate any data without it being extremely obvious? Right.
You could not make this silly PR=B$ shit up, I mean look at the exlcusion in the ban “Exceptions will be made for emergency situations, including natural disasters or when lives are threatened, Mr. Goodwin said.”. So what they are banning employees from using the drones for what, for fun, playing with them, no purpose behind their use. Everytime they use the drones is because lives are potentially at risk, so the ban is entirely a publicity stunt. Grounding all Chinese Drones or drones with Chinese parts in
> And how are they going to exfiltrate any data without it being extremely obvious?
Well by design they transmit several Mbps to any receiver within range, for the video feed. Plus telemetry. I don’t know what telemetry their drones send back (wirelessly), but my toy sends GPS coordinates, altitude, attitude, etc and that’s a you under $300.
What are the Chinese going to spy on here? Forrest fires?
I’m not intending to argue for or against this ban, but – the US Department of the Interior is responsible for a number of things which could be considered potential targets by an adversary. Dams and reservoirs, for one thing. They provide oversight and Inspection of many forms of US energy production, especially off-shore.
Even if they’re not the ones directly responsible for security – that’d generally be Homeland Security, obviously – oversight and monitoring duty would mean they are collecting a lot of d
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