I have a love-hate relationship with drones. I love technology and love the idea of getting a literal bird’s eye view of something I want to photograph – an eagle or osprey’s nest comes to mind. My friend uses his for his architectural jobs when he’s checking out a site. Another friend of mine uses drones for photographing weddings and getting unique views of houses and land he photographs for publications. Another uses it to run her dog.
I got pretty steamed when police and fire departments decided that it was ok for them to have drones and then arranged to put restrictions on the peasants’ use of them. After a couple of years of telling the proletariat that drones were bad because they got in their way of doing police and firefighter work, they got the laws switched, and all of a sudden, it was only they who could operate drones near a police action or in watching firefighters.
I don’t like drones over my house and I don’t do it to others, but the public works departments can use drones over my house.
Obviously, drones can be creepy, but that depends entirely on the intent of the operator. Being a member of the proletariat does not mean one is imbued with bad intentions any more than it means official police and public works jobs are filled with good ones. “Is that a new addition you have on your property?” “That wall needs a permit.” “What are you burning on your property?” “There’s an officer on the way to your home right now, don’t leave.” “Those aren’t the right kind of plants in your yard.” “What happened to that old-growth tree?”
When my architect friend bought his new drone, he took it out for a spin and was delighted to see a function on the futuristic toy that said “home.” Great, he thought, if for some reason I lose sight of the drone I can program it to go home. He hit the home function and suddenly was alerted that home was too far away and the battery would run out of juice. “Home” was China.
All of this to say that the Chinese are manufacturing drones and either giving them to American cop shops or selling them for a sweet and low price. It’s the way they’ve gone about selling 5G technology as a loss leader throughout the world, while keeping control of a kill switch that allows the Chinese government to control the 5G and hoover up information.
Congressman Matt Gaetz says that must stop. He says those drones, made by DJI (which stands for Dà-Jiāng Innovations), are nothing less than a “Trojan Horse” “spying operation in our country and your local police department may be unknowingly helping them.”
China is massively expanding a Trojan Horse spying operation in our country…and your local police department may be unknowingly helping them. pic.twitter.com/765y1ECVgM
— Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) May 5, 2020
Gaetz has asked Attorney General Bill Barr to outlaw the use of the DJI drones because, as Just the News reports the Chinese-made drones have sent back sensitive information to “home.” A 2017 report indicated the drones could be used for picking targets for terrorists.
DJI (Dà-Jiāng Innovations) is a Chinese technology company that is suspected of using information from the drones used by U.S. law enforcement to feed sensitive data back to the Chinese government.
In 2017, the Department of Homeland Security released a report, in which they determined that DJI had specifically marketed their product to local law enforcement agencies, and as a result, China is able to “provide DJI information to terrorist organizations … to coordinate attacks against U.S. critical infrastructure.”
Just as the US military restricted the use of FitBits because bad actors could detect the massing of troops, and for the same reason that the Chinese app TikTok is banned for use by military personnel, Gaetz says the US military has ceased using the DJI drones.
The Chinese Communist Party isn’t our friend.
Seems like a good enough reason to me to send those bad boys “home.”
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