US Interior Department To Ground Its Drones Over Chinese Spying Risk (cnet.com) 33
The Interior Department is grounding its entire fleet of aerial drones (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source), one of the largest in the federal government, citing increasing concerns about the national security risk from Chinese manufacturers. The Wall Street Journal reports: The department has more than 800 drones, all of which are either made in China or have Chinese parts, according to a person familiar with the matter. The machines are used to fight forest fires, survey erosion, monitor endangered species and inspect dams. Under an order from Interior Secretary David Bernhardt on Wednesday, the drones will be grounded until the department completes a review of potential security risks of Chinese drones, said department spokesman Nick Goodwin. Exceptions will be made for emergency situations, including natural disasters or when lives are threatened, Mr. Goodwin said.
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.
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.
Ban but not Ban (Score:4, Insightful)
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 them, when they are being used for fun by Department of Interior Employees because we they need to be used for serious purposes they will be, well hopefully they are only used for serious purposes and not as toys.
To be read as US Department of Interior makes Anti-China announcement more PR=B$ to follow. All the US government had to to was put a clause in Federal contracts that everything bought by the Federal government has to be US made but instead an empty PR Stunt.
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Everytime they use the drones is because lives are potentially at risk, so the ban is entirely a publicity stunt.
This is what happens when you let your pre-conceived notions get in the way of understanding the facts. From TFS: The machines are used to fight forest fires, survey erosion, monitor endangered species and inspect dams. Only one of those four use cases involves human lives potentially being at risk.
Wireless broadcast several Mbps (Score:3)
> 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.
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Drones examine drone data? (Score:2)
> You would think when they purchased these Drones, they looked at all the data the drones were transmitting and storing.
You think ANYONE does forensic analysis on their new taxpayer-funded toy?
"They" are government drones. People unable or unwilling to get a decent job in their field, so they are working for government pay, half of what their private-sector colleagues make.
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Ok, you can stop with that shit right there. The vast majority of people who work in government fields, especially sciences, parks, public safety, etc... are doing so because they love their country and want to contribute. They are doing it DESPITE the fact that the government pays less, and DESPITE the fact that their departments are almost always under-resourced because conservatives don't give a shit about the country or the public good a
Stuck in a gvt job, eh? (Score:2)
So you're stuck in a government job, eh?
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Right, but that's over short range wireless. How does that get from the receiver on to the internet and back to China without anyone noticing? Or do you think that China has hidden 2.4GHz receivers with satellite uplinks hidden all over the US and the FCC hasn't noticed?
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Indeed. Any data exfiltration will be extremely obvious.
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> Or do you think that China has hidden 2.4GHz receivers
I don't know, of you come across anything that runs on 2.4 Ghz check to see where it's made. It could secretly be Chinese. :D
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Or do you think that China has hidden 2.4GHz receivers with satellite uplinks hidden all over the US and the FCC hasn't noticed?
Could be in all those Chinese TV sets that pop up nag screens, begging you to connect them to your broadband service.
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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
10,000X scarier than nuclear power stations (Score:3)
> 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.
The Banquaio disaster, for example killed 200,000.
For scale, Fukushima killed three, Chernobyl 60. For those unfamiliar, Banquaio was a hydroelectric dam.
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And how exactly do you think data leaks from a drone are going to bring down a hydro dam?
Its not like a visiting Chinese national couldnt just fly their OWN drone over it if they wanted a look....
Smells rather a lot of good ole pork barrel. I wonder which US companies (that no doubt use chinese parts inside their drones) lobbied for this, and will now sell their drones as replacements at 20 times the price.
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So much work. Just take the tour and buy a postcard from the gift shop on your way out.
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Dams and reservoirs, for one thing.
1. You need a hell of a lot to bring a modern dam. When Bulgaria built their defensive weapons of mass destruction ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] + https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] + https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]) it had TRUCKS (plural) assigned to the job of taking them down in case hostilities start with NATO on the Warsaw block southern flank as well as backup coordinates for missile batteries to do the job if the trucks fail or are prevented from taking the dam down.
2. You need the dam tec
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The data produced by survey drones is frequently placed in publicly accessible GIS databases, so it's true that the Chinese can read it... without hacking or backdooring anything. None of it is actually sensitive information. The locations of major infrastructure items aren't secret. They're on all the maps. If you wanted to target for example every dam in America, you could probably do that solely with the freely available vmap0 dataset.
much MUCH worse... (Score:2)
They probably dont realize that pretty much EVERYTHING has 'chinese parts'
specifically circuit boards, which even for US products were almost certainly made and assembles in china.
So, I guess its time to just switch off anything electrical in the US, just in case.
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Re:Quite the rational panic (Score:2)
And how are they going to exfiltrate any data without it being extremely obvious? Right.
Right? "In 2010 a Chinese ISP momentarily hijacked the Internet" [washingtonpost.com]
But I am sure they can probably just encrypt the traffic to obscure it and since "The Internet of Things" is just a bunch of spyware enabled devices calling home with all sorts of marketing and service data then I think it would be relatively trivial to slip in a few relevant clips of video and GPS data here and there... you know for "diagnostic services" to "improve the service" like you agreed to in that terms of service.
And no reason to th
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Fuck you, asshole. Stay in whatever shithole excuse for a country you're from and keep your mouth shut.
Posted anonymously due to intense personal cowardice.
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If you were in Europe during WWII, you wouldn't have accused the Americans of being cowards. That war opened up American eyes to what could happen when it was isolationist. And the mood is currently turning isolationist again with that doofus in the WH. So welcome your new Chinese overlords, they have your best interests at heart.
China owns the powergrid (Score:4, Interesting)
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