Both the Secret Service and the FBI bought surveillance drones from a company that the Department of Defense believes could be a national security threat.
The Secret Service bought eight drones from Da Jiang Innovations (based in Shenzhen, China) on July 26, while the FBI purchased 19 of them days earlier, according to Axios, which obtained records of the sales.
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The Secret Service’s drone purchase, which it said was meant to “supplement the Agency’s existing fleet of small unmanned aircraft and improved mission support through the use of the most up-to-date equipment [a]nd software,” came just three days after the Defense Department released a statement that said the company poses “potential threats to national security.”
The FBI said it made the purchase because the drones were “the only commercially available consumer sUAS to combine all these capabilities at an acceptable cost.”
The Pentagon also noted that DJI systems are not approved for procurement and operations for U.S. government departments and agencies, which contradicted a report summary from U.S. Army Special Operations Command Adam Prater indicating that “no malicious code or intent” was found on two DJI drones.
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A spokesman for DJI, Adam Lisberg, disputed claims that the company was providing customer data to the Chinese government.
“Claims that somehow DJI products are transmitting customer data back to China, or to DJI, or anywhere they’re not supposed to be … are just false,” he told Axios. “No one has ever found a deliberate attempt to steal data or any of the other fantasies promoted by some of our critics. It simply isn’t true,” he said.
