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Yeah an overzealous FAA official with no authority got a slap down for telling people that.
Can the FAA track your drone and match to you?
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Yeah an overzealous FAA official with no authority got a slap down for telling people that.
One thing I noticed yesterday on the FAA site is that you can download a csv file with the number of registered holders in each city and zip code. Not like one can do much with this info but it's just interesting to see how many people are registered in your city. Mine only has 2.
Well, lets see here. Now if I had been at any time an official "Spook", having anything whatsoever to do with the "three letter" Agencies, here's what I would do to see if there were "drones" within a several mile radius of a certain location...
A: Listen for Drone air to ground transmissions by doing sweeps with highly sensitive and directional antenna arrays on both the 2.4 and 5.8 ghz bands. Listen for the signature signal combining telemetry, control, and video transmissions. QED (quite easily done).
B: Having acquired this fairly generic "signature" signal, I would then look for a unique identifier of that aircraft if any (I'm not talking the "flying license plate proposed by DJI, but it is unknown if there may be an imbedded code in each UAV, but if there is, I don't have much doubt that some arrangement may exist so that the "Agency" may query DJI and see who the craft is registered to...
C: Gee, I almost forgot...I'd also watch the video stream too and probably find interesting clues as to location, and given the penchant for "selfies" these days, also view the pilots smiling face either departing or returning home, AND since the cameras on our UAVs are pretty good these days AND there are now large databases of "Faces" from our "hey look at me" culture and marvelous "Facial Recognition" software available...
...I don't know why I have a suspicion that in about 30 minutes after posting this I'll get a knock at the door
I hope its Mulder and Sculley this time, I sure do miss em'
A: Listen for Drone air to ground transmissions by doing sweeps with highly sensitive and directional antenna arrays on both the 2.4 and 5.8 ghz bands. Listen for the signature signal combining telemetry, control, and video transmissions. QED (quite easily done).
B: Having acquired this fairly generic "signature" signal, I would then look for a unique identifier of that aircraft if any (I'm not talking the "flying license plate proposed by DJI, but it is unknown if there may be an imbedded code in each UAV, but if there is, I don't have much doubt that some arrangement may exist so that the "Agency" may query DJI and see who the craft is registered to...
C: Gee, I almost forgot...I'd also watch the video stream too and probably find interesting clues as to location, and given the penchant for "selfies" these days, also view the pilots smiling face either departing or returning home, AND since the cameras on our UAVs are pretty good these days AND there are now large databases of "Faces" from our "hey look at me" culture and marvelous "Facial Recognition" software available...
...I don't know why I have a suspicion that in about 30 minutes after posting this I'll get a knock at the door
I hope its Mulder and Sculley this time, I sure do miss em'
If the FAA can get the Chinese government to force DJI to give them access to the flight logs they will have the lat/long, flight track and altitudes. They will also have the serial numbers to match up to the registrations.
Meta4
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But the FAA hasn't asked DJI for flight logs and are unlikely to as they are too busy with things that matter to go trawling through everyone's flight data looking to see if anyone may have done something wrong.
They don't do that with real planes either - they look into incidents when there's something worth their time and effort.
And even if they did, DJI are unlikely to hand over data.
But if they did, DJI only have the data that you choose to upload to DJI.
DJI have no idea where/when you fly unless you give them that information.
If you thought I might be kidding in my earlier post about methods used to detect your drone flying in (whatever) location I'm not. To quote George Carlin "This is Mr. Conductor talking and I know what I'm talking about". The following product link should be very enlightening...
https://cdn.rohde-schwarz.com/pws/d...1/ARDRONIS__pro-fly_en_3607-4993-32_v0300.pdf
https://cdn.rohde-schwarz.com/pws/d...1/ARDRONIS__pro-fly_en_3607-4993-32_v0300.pdf
Not so sure about this....
Remember the near miss incident that turned out to be a floating bag over in the U.K.? DJI came out the very next day and confirmed it was not one of theirs....
I am a firm believer they are logging all flights. And see no problem with them giving that info to a US government agency. I mean they are all ready trying to sell a tracking device to them.
Meta4
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I remember the incident but don't remember DJI commenting and can't find anything to confirm they did.
If they did, it may have been as simple as ours can't go that high.
You have to wear the tinfoil hat shiny side up for it to work properly.
It's one thing to say that DJI logs all flights but that doesn't explain how they could.
Like many others, I fly a wifi tablet in areas away from any wifi.
DJI have no way of knowing where and when I fly unless I upload my flight data to their cloud.
And btw ... the "tracking device" you refer to doesn't exist and would not work beyond a small local area.
The GO app collects a LOT of personal information, as does the DJI SDK that third party apps have to be built on. Just look at the privacy statement your phone shows you when you install it about everything they want to access. Way more than they would need to ID you. If any incident ever happens involving a DJI drone, they'll know who did it, unless you were flying completely by eye with no app turned on, and even then I bet the controller has the info they'd need. It would be surprising if they were turning that info over to the FAA as a matter of course, but not completely out of the realm of possibility.
Agree.
I just used exif tool software and saw the long camera serial number listed on a JPG out of the FC330 (P4) drone so some info is stamped to the photos, and I don't know about the movies but likely. No doubt DJI can trace your initial registration log on of your drone's serial and with the camera exif data it is easily traceable if law enforcement or whomever wants it. I suspect GO has a lot of tattleware built into it too as some hackers say it uses about 12 open ports in communications and maybe why it also breaks up feed at times. Cloud sync is another issue too. Tin foil hat theory might be that the forward facing camera on your tablet/phone has your face at the controls during the suspect flight too.
Meta4
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I love the paranoia that shows up when people discuss this.
Why would DJI go to that much trouble? They aren't the NSA.
Any app has all sorts of privacy statement info and tie-ins to other software etc these days - not just DJI's Go app.
You can fly your Phantom out in the middle of the desert or mid-ocean (or most of the places where I fly) and your app has no way of communicating with anything but the Phantom.
How would DJI ever find out about those flights unless you upload them?
Exif data? Every camera puts that on every image created.
Why would DJI go to that much trouble? They aren't the NSA.
Any app has all sorts of privacy statement info and tie-ins to other software etc these days - not just DJI's Go app.
You can fly your Phantom out in the middle of the desert or mid-ocean (or most of the places where I fly) and your app has no way of communicating with anything but the Phantom.
How would DJI ever find out about those flights unless you upload them?
Exif data? Every camera puts that on every image created.
And don't you forget that every time you fly, they are uplinking a signal straight from your Phantom to Black helicopters that are tracking your every move. U.N. Helicopters.
Topic has been covered elsewhere.
"When Will DJI’s Remote Identification Be Implemented?
DJI said that they are capable of starting operations as early as this summer."
Info: http://wetalkuav.com/dji-remote-identification-license/
"When Will DJI’s Remote Identification Be Implemented?
DJI said that they are capable of starting operations as early as this summer."
Info: http://wetalkuav.com/dji-remote-identification-license/
When we were doing our app development and getting into the play store, we had to be very aware of permissions, privacy policies, etc. The DJI SDK is VERY aggressive in demanding access, access that we the third party developers don't get, but that DJI does get. Do I think they are actively spying on all drone pilots, either for themselves or for the government (ours or theirs)? Nah. I suspect it's just a case of bad developers turning everything on, because they don't know any better. They're a hardware company after all, their software is pretty awful. But they're not following current best practices when it comes to this stuff, and are going above and beyond the current norm ("Device ID & Call Information" is not normal at this point, and not at all necessary to fly a drone). Tinfoil hat thinking is silly, but dismissing this as a complete non-issue is silly as well.
I will reply.. I was in ohio filming a charity bike run, Saturday b4 4th of July. Monday the FAA called me and I had to send in the video footage I had taken. Or ? So I ask the FAA guy how he knew where I was. He said, someone called in and they tracked me by the GPS ON the drone.
Meta4
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His explanation is very vague and far from accurate.
The GPS on the Phantom is a receiver only - it only relays it's position to your controller.
GPS satellites have no idea and no record of the thousands of users that are receiving their signals.
If your drone is communicating outside the US, the govt has the authority to track your communication. I would assume they are doing it. It's what we pay taxes for: protect us from ourselves. As pogo said: "I have seen the enemy and he is us."
Meta4
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Is your drone is communicating outside the US??
It can only manage to communicate with your controller from 1-2 miles away in good conditions.
It can't communicate with foreign countries.
Likewise your government has no way to track your Phantom unless they have some sophisticated equipment and are within range when you are flying.
Somehow I doubt that the government bothers to track every Phantom in the country .. or even yours.
For a start, I can't imaging any reason they would want to.
I never that the faa, could or could not track me I said the the from the FAA said that's how they knew.
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