Lawmakers are trying to ban a Chinese company on "surveillance" grounds to benefit American competitors powering U.S. police surveillance.

Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives jammed a functional ban on DJI drones, called the “Countering CCP Drones Act” into a military funding bill that it then passed. The bill would put DJI drones, which are made in China, onto a Federal Communications Commission “covered list” alongside other banned Chinese tech companies, meaning that new drones would not be approved to use the communications infrastructure they need in order to operate. The ban could possibly ground existing drones, as well.

This potential ban is a uniquely American clusterfuck that is arguably even worse than the TikTok ban in its absurdity because of the specifics of how we got here: There is no evidence that China is spying on DJI drones, the drone features that make lawmakers worried about “spying” were originally introduced because of U.S. regulations and government pressure, and, for drone hobbyists, there are not really any American-made drone alternatives that can step in to replace DJI’s spot in the market.

Essentially, the US government pressured drone manufacturers to implement privacy and safety features that required internet infrastructure to operate, DJI built those features, and now lawmakers say those same features could be used by China to spy on Americans and are the reason for the ban. Meanwhile, the only existing American drone manufacturers create far more invasive products that are sold exclusively to law enforcement and government entities, which are increasingly using them to conduct surveillance on American citizens and communities. This means that we may face a situation where hobbyists, small businesses, and aerial photographers who make a living with drones can suddenly no longer fly them, but cops will.

  • dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world
    282·
    8 days ago

    This means that we may face a situation where hobbyists, small businesses, and aerial photographers who make a living with drones can suddenly no longer fly them, but cops will.

    That was always the goal.

    China (and probably Russia still) have satellites that can read the headlines on your newspaper from orbit. The notion that they’d need or use noisy, unreliable, and easily noticed commercial hobbyist drones for this purpose is laughably absurd. Even if they are planning on secretly snooping on the feeds of privately owned fliers, which is probably not actually feasible at scale anyway. How is the data supposed to be transmitted back to China? Magic? Through the cloud via the user’s cell phone data, with no one noticing? Gigabytes and gigabytes of it per flight? I’m not buying it.

    The real reason the US government is so scared of drones is because it will allow the citizenry (i.e., us) to document abuses and authoritarianism in a manner that’s pretty tough to stop with the usual billy clubs/guns/tear gas/water cannons method. Think BLM, Occupy, future climate protests, and all of those sorts of things. Unchecked aerial photography and video that contradicts the Official Narrative from whatever today’s incident happens to be making it out to the internet and going viral would be highly inconvenient, wouldn’t it? Someone can be capturing video of the police shooting protestors or whatever and easily be half a mile away from where the drone itself is located.

    It speaks volumes about the pathology and mindset of American legislators and law enforcement that they inherently see drones as a “spy” technology. That’s because this is exactly what they plan to use them for, and are terrified that someone else might do the same thing to them.

    Well, tough fucking titty.