Funded by Kevin Durant and founded by 2 ex-Google software engineers, this drone startup is scoring millions in government surveillance contracts
covering Ohio’s use of the technology suggested it had facial detection capabilities and was able to dodge objects as it autonomously tracked a person. “As you can see, it'll keep following me. If I'm running on a bike path, and I think it'll try to go around me even here, too, if it sees my face,” said David Gallagher, chief of staff at the Ohio Unmanned Aerial Systems Center.
As one former employee explained, this isn’t face recognition, more person recognition: the Skydio tech can detect people in a scene, the user then chooses who to track.The company’s shift to government work is also evident in Skydio’s efforts to woo the mandarins of Capitol Hill.found records of recent Skydio lobbying efforts, after it handed $30,000 this year to lobbying firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck. In return, the firm has been talking with Senators and Representatives, as well as the Executive Office of the President, about unspecified “issues related to supply chain/national security.” Skydio’s tech could now be put to use on protesters, given its government customer base. . As revealed byon Monday, the DEA has been given permission to carry out surveillance on protesters and could now apply such tech to spying on crowds gathering across U.S. cities. President Trump has already called in the Air Force and threatened deployment of the U.S. military to clamp down on the protests.America loves drones Not that Skydio is the only supplier of government drones that could be used for protester surveillance. Far from it. Millions has been spent on a mix of boutique and established providers in the last 12 months. Last week, the CBP was spotted flying a Predator drone over the protest site in Minneapolis, where George Floyd was killed after a police officer kneeled on his neck. An official with the CBP alsothat the agency had been using drones to track down suspects who’d knocked down officers with an SUV in Buffalo. In the last year alone, the border agency has spent $47 million on services from the Predator manufacturer, General Atomics, a company built by two billionaire brothers, as detailed in aearlier this year. Sister DHS agency, ICE, has been keen on drones of late too: in June last year, it made a purchase of $146,663 in drones from Illinois-based Darley, which resells unmanned aerial systems from a variety of manufacturers, including the famous Chinese company DJI. ... [+]The FBI, meanwhile, spent $76,000 on unmanned aircraft in September 2019 via Autonodyne, a Florida-based company that offers automated drone operation. An August 2019 $113,000 order from New York-based consumer tech supplier Adorama in August 2019 showed the FBI’s Counter Improvised Explosive Device Unit bought a drone that was “all weather capable” and could live stream events below. It’s also been updating its drone fleet from Riegl, which uses laser scanners to acquire data in “dangerous” and “hard-to-reach areas.” The agency refused to comment on whether it was carrying out aerial surveillance over protest sites, though aircraft that have previously been linked with the agency have beenThe U.S. Marshalls, another Justice Department agency that’s been asked to help quell the protests, spent $52,000 in July 2019 on unmanned aircraft from a little known company called Physical Sciences. It provides small, low-cost drones that look more like consumer UAVs and they’re typically used for high-grade image capture and “tracking uncooperative targets.” ICE is also a Physical Sciences customer, after a $43,000 order in May last year.Altogether, the agencies Trump has asked to monitor protesters have extraordinary spying tools beyond those flying machines.
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