Popular Chinese drone maker DJI, formally named Da Jiang Innovations Science and Technology Company, has responded to an earlier claim by the United States government that its commercial products may be sending sensitive information about American infrastructure back to China.
"The allegations in the bulletin are so profoundly wrong as a factual matter that ICE should consider withdrawing it, or at least correcting its unsupportable assertions," the drone maker said in a statement, cited by The New York Times.
DJI added that the claims can be rebuffed with a basic knowledge of the drone industry or even a simple internet search.
Earlier, the Los Angeles office of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau assessed "with moderate confidence" that DJI’s drones are "providing US critical infrastructure and law enforcement data to the Chinese government." The memo was issued in August but only started circulating online more recently.
Specifically, the document noted that DJI used by companies and institutions could be targeting American companies and institutions working in media, railroad, farming, federal law enforcement and education as well as facilities used for storing weapons and ammunitions.
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"Much of the information collected includes proprietary and sensitive critical infrastructure data, such as detailed imagery of power control panels, security measures for critical infrastructure sites, or materials used in bridge construction," it read.
To store data, DJI products use cloud services located in China and the Chinese government could use access to this information and then proceed to "conduct physical or cyber-attacks against the US," the document claimed.
The authorities said their assessment was based on "open source reporting and a reliable source within the unmanned aerial systems industry with first and secondhand access." The source was not named in the document though.
