NSW Police Stands by Acquisition of New Chinese Drones for Aerial Surveillance
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NSW Police is standing by the acquisition of two Chinese-produced DJI drones it will use for aerial surveillance.
“Polair Remote” will be stationed in Moree in regional New South Wales (NSW) and be piloted from Bankstown in Sydney’s south-west.
“The use of drones will allow regional police to utilise aerial assets without the need for an on-site pilot. Instead, the drones will be remotely piloted from a ‘Remote Operations Centre’ at Bankstown Airport, with real-time video being fed back to operational police,” reads the statement.
“The drones will also assist police in providing situational awareness during public safety incidents and other emergencies, including search and rescue operations and missing people searches.”
The two drones have already been used to assist with the response to assaults, break and enters, as well as vehicle recovery.
They are housed in self-contained boxes where they can launch, land, and charge. After a six month trial, the technology will be rolled out across the state.
Daniel Lewkovitz, owner of security firm Calamity Monitoring, said there were concerns about the Chinese-owned Da Jiang Innovations (DJI).
“DJI has previously been designated as a ‘Chinese Military Company’ and sanctioned by the United States government,” Lewkovitz’s wrote on X on Feb. 19.
NSW Police Stands by Safety Measures
NSW Police said it had a “sound procurement” process behind the drone acquisition.
“The New South Wales Police Force (NSWPF) has a sound procurement policy in place for the ongoing purchase of its remotely piloted aircraft and complies with this policy at all times,” the agency told The Epoch Times.
“The NSWPF must constantly assess capability against cost effectiveness and cyber security to ensure public safety across NSW in a range of use cases.
“The NSWPF adopts a range of cyber security strategies to ensure the security of the police network is upheld at all times.”
The Chinese drone giant has also raised concerns in Australia.
In July 2023, then-Shadow Cyber Security Minister James Paterson questioned government departments about the presence of thousands of DJI drones and related accessories across Commonwealth agencies, citing cyber‑security and national‑security concerns.
“The government needs to move beyond its whack-a-mole approach, where it is reliant on an opposition senator to sound the alarm on cyber security risks, towards a more systemic, robust and proactive model,” Senator Paterson wrote on his website at the time.
“The Albanese government should act now before it’s too late to mitigate the risk of products being weaponised to conduct cyber disruptions, surveillance and large-scale foreign interference.”
Sanctions DJI Face in United States
Founded in Shenzhen, China in 2006, DJI has been flagged by U.S. regulators as a security threat due to its connections with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In 2020, the U.S. Commerce Department added DJI to its export control list, citing its involvement in supporting the CCP’s human rights violations, such as assisting state surveillance of Uyghur people in China’s Xinjiang region.
The following year, the U.S. Treasury prohibited American individuals from trading DJI shares due to similar concerns.
“Military-civil fusion” refers to a strategy in which all civilian technologies are expected to serve dual use as military technologies. Military and commercial-first drones are critical to the CCP’s efforts to expand and modernise its military through this strategy.
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The NSW decision also comes at a time when Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced a lawsuit against drone maker Anzu Robotics on Feb. 19, alleging that the U.S.-based company rebranded products sourced from DJI and concealed its ties with the Chinese communist regime.
“This means DJI, and by extension the ruling CCP, has the technical capability to access, modify, or extract data from Anzu drones,” Paxton alleged in the complaint filed in a Texas state court.
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