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<\/p>\nDJI is working on a \u201clocal data mode\u201d for its apps that prevents any data from being sent to or received from the internet. The feature will be welcomed by many, but it\u2019s hard not to attribute the timing and urgency of the announcement to the recent ban of DJI gear by the U.S. Army over unspecified \u201ccyber vulnerabilities.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are creating local data mode to address the needs of our enterprise customers, including public and private organizations that are using DJI technology to perform sensitive operations around the world,\u201d said Brendan Schulman, the company\u2019s VP of Policy and Legal Affairs, in a press release. The new feature should arrive before the end of September.<\/p>\n
The Army memo, first published at Small UAS News and dated August 2, said that \u201cdue to increased awareness of cyber vulnerabilities associated with DJI products, it is directed that the U.S. Army halt use of all DJI products.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not clear what these vulnerabilities actually are, or whether the mere possibility of sensitive information being transmitted was enough to spook someone at HQ.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
DJI\u2019s flight control apps, from which users can launch and control drones, does indeed regularly phone home to make sure it is up to date, using current maps and so on. And if the user chose to, it would back-up flight logs and media to DJI\u2019s servers. But the online functions aren\u2019t necessary for ordinary operation and flight, so local data mode doesn\u2019t affect airworthiness or anything like that.<\/p>\n
Although DJI was not made aware of the Army\u2019s concerns ahead of time, the new mode has been in development for several months, according to the press release. So either a little bird told the company this was a possibility, or more likely it\u2019s just a smart option to include when your craft and apps are being put into national security and life-and-death type situations.<\/p>\n
A DJI representative told TechCrunch that today\u2019s announcement isn\u2019t in response to the memo. Schulman, however, told The New York Times that \u201cthe Army memo caused customers to express renewed concern about data security.\u201d<\/p>\n
These statements may seem contradictory, but it\u2019s not hard to imagine that when a major client like the Army raises security concerns, others will join the chorus. So DJI can say the announcement today wasn\u2019t in response to the memo \u2014 not directly, anyway. But chances are we wouldn\u2019t be hearing about the feature until later had the memo not been publicized.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not responding to the Army, which has never explained its concerns to us,\u201d explained Adam Lisberg, DJI\u2019s corporate comms director for North America, in response to my inquiries along these lines. \u201cWe\u2019re accelerating the rollout of something we\u2019ve been working on for a while. We announced it today because enterprise customers with serious data security have made clear they need something like this for a while, and the Army memo reinforced that concern for them. So we\u2019re addressing it quickly as part of our commitment to delivering what our enterprise customers need.\u201d<\/p>\n
It matters because DJI isn\u2019t a military-specific drone maker, like General Atomics, which makes Predators \u2014 though the chances of a Chinese company ever being so are slim, to say the least. It\u2019s also a matter of public image: they\u2019re a company looking out for consumers and the occasional government contract, not a major participator in the military-industrial complex.<\/p>\n
Clearly, the company wants to signal that it takes its feature requests not from foreign governments, but from its valued users all over the globe, of which the Army happens to be one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
DJI is working on a \u201clocal data mode\u201d for its apps that prevents any data from being sent to or received from the internet. The feature will be welcomed by many, but it\u2019s hard not to attribute the timing and urgency of the announcement to the recent ban of DJI gear by the U.S. Army […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":144,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_gspb_post_css":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-drone-news"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/devipcard.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/dji-phantom-3-front-detail.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devipcard.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devipcard.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devipcard.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devipcard.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devipcard.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/devipcard.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1080,"href":"https:\/\/devipcard.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions\/1080"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devipcard.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devipcard.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devipcard.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devipcard.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141"},{"taxonomy":"offerexpiration","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devipcard.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/offerexpiration?post=141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}