A Chinese student studying at the University of Minnesota manipulated a drone to take footage of a highly guarded naval shipyard in Virginia, leading to his incarceration for six months after being charged by the US Department of Justice. The Department of Justice deemed the student’s actions as espionage.
In January of this year, 26-year-old Fengyun Shi used a drone to take photos over the Newport News Shipbuilding yard in Norfolk, Virginia, prompting local residents to alert the authorities. In June, he was charged with six misdemeanor offenses under the Espionage Act; and in July, he pleaded guilty to two charges – one for filming military facilities in a defense airspace and another for using an unregistered aircraft to film important military installations. The remaining four charges were dismissed by the US Department of Justice.
This case is highly unusual.
On October 2, Fengyun Shi was sentenced in the Eastern District Court of Virginia. The US media reported on this verdict on Tuesday, October 15.
At the time, Fengyun Shi was a graduate student majoring in agricultural engineering at the University of Minnesota. According to a regulation from World War II under the U.S. Espionage Act, he will be under court supervision for one year following his release.
His lawyer, Shaoming Cheng, submitted court documents the day before sentencing, arguing that his client had “taken several photos of (NNS) without realizing that these photos might contain sensitive information.”
Cheng requested a lenient sentence, suggesting that the incident was fundamentally accidental. He added that Fengyun Shi “did not know the law and thought it was cool and fun to take photos from different angles. He had no intention of obtaining or transmitting sensitive information to any foreign entities.”
According to Fengyun Shi’s plea agreement: he purchased the drone on January 3, arrived in Norfolk from San Francisco the next day, and operated the drone over the BAE Systems shipyard on Jan 5 without capturing any photos.
On January 6, Fengyun Shi’s drone got stuck in a tree near NNS, and he asked nearby residents to help retrieve it. This resident then alerted the authorities.
When the police arrived, Fengyun Shi stated that he was vacationing in the area during his graduate studies. When questioned by the police about why he was flying a drone in the region on a day with adverse weather conditions unsuitable for drone operation, he appeared very nervous and did not explain to the police why he was flying a drone in bad weather conditions.
The police instructed him to contact the fire department for assistance. However, Fengyun Shi drove back to Norfolk International Airport in a rented car, boarded an Amtrak train to Washington DC, and flew to the Bay Area of California 25 hours later.
Federal authorities arrested Fengyun Shi on January 18 before he boarded a one-way flight to China.
On January 7, the drone fell from the tree onto a local resident’s lawn, and the next day, it was retrieved by members of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. According to court documents, the SD card of the drone showed footage taken by Fengyun Shi of U.S. Navy ships or ships intended for naval use. This violated the Espionage Act, which prohibits anyone from filming companies manufacturing classified military equipment.
Joshua Quitaro, the security manager at Newport News Shipbuilding, wrote a letter to the court during sentencing, stating that the yard builds and maintains naval aircraft carriers and submarines, as well as refueling nuclear-powered aircraft carriers.
“Much of the work on these naval projects and some of the components are classified as top secret,” Quitaro said. “Ensuring that the airspace of (NNS) is not compromised by unauthorized private drones flying over, as in the case of Shi, is crucial for the (shipyard) to continue its work for the US Navy.”
He added: “To my knowledge, this is the first time an unauthorized private drone has flown over (the shipyard) and taken photos of the facility.”
Fengyun Shi’s profile on LinkedIn shows that he graduated from Jilin University and interned for nearly 1 and a half years at State Grid Corporation of China. In his spare time, he was a player of the online game “League of Legends” and was developing an application called Gopher Eye, designed to detect crop diseases through photos. The application was funded by the National Science Foundation and had a patent pending, hence on LinkedIn, he also referred to himself as a “business manager.”
(This article referenced reports from Minnesota Star Tribune and Star Forum News)