The USA has kept silent about its reasons for the Chinese company ban although the restrictions started two weeks after the US Army discontinued their DJI system due to cyber security fears. DJI notified BBC that they already built the new facility which accelerated its development following the ban.
The new mode will initiate its launch during the following month.
According to the Shenzhen-based company data assurance through this mode will offer superior security to flights with critical infrastructure and commercial trade secrets and governmental functions and comparable applications.
Disabled features
In 2016 DJI encountered security alarm after an employee advised reporters that the company repeatedly provided customer data to Chinese authorities.
A short statement followed where the company explained that information transfer only occurred when compliant legal demands originated from Beijing and other government entities.
DJI declares it lacks access to flight logs or captured images except through user activation of tracking and control applications named Go.
Customers will receive additional confidence from this latest system update.
Users who activate the privacy mode will disable various features which include:
livestream videos to YouTube
Detects the installation of geofencing boundary updates and map updates automatically for preventing owners from entering prohibited flight areas.
Users with enabled privacy mode will get instant alerts about flight restriction updates from air authorities.
The new mode leads DJI to declare it will stop its availability in countries with flight regulation ruling on mandatory official notifications.
New memo
After finding operational risks in DJI drones the US armed forces announced their ban on the drones through a 2 August memorandum.
Under the memorandum the military needed to stop drone operations and uninstall DJI software applications from its computers along with extracting batteries together with storage media from drones throughout the storage period.
The SUAS news site initially exposed the development before reporting about a subsequent 11 August memorandum.
Until a DJI-enabled software plugin receives proper testing from the army authorities they will issue exceptions for the restrictions.
