Chinese Student Pleads Guilty to Using Drones to Photograph US Naval Shipyards

A Chinese student plead guilty to two misdemeanors under the Espionage Act for using a drone to take photos of naval shipyards in Virginia. Shi Fengyun, born in China in 1998, pleaded guilty to two out of six Espionage Act misdemeanors in federal court in Virginia’s Eastern District on July 8, according to court documents. The Department of Justice, which charged Mr. Shi in June, dismissed the remaining four misdemeanors. The two misdemeanors fall under one statute of the Espionage Act, which prohibits unauthorized photography of military installations using aircraft such as drones. A court document stated that Mr. Shi purchased a drone on Jan. 3, when he was an agricultural engineering graduate student at the University of Minnesota, on a student visa....