Lithuania Recommends Throwing Away Chinese Phones ‘as Fast as Reasonably Possible’
The country’s Defense Ministry discovered censorship controls included on Xiaomi phones.
UPDATE 9/23: Xiaomi has now responded to the directive given by the Defense Ministry of Lithuania to throw away Chinese phones. A Xiaomi spokesperson said:
“Xiaomi’s devices do not censor communications to or from its users. Xiaomi has never and will never restrict or block any personal behaviors of our smartphone users, such as searching, calling, web browsing or the use of third-party communication software. Xiaomi fully respects and protects the legal rights of all users. Xiaomi complies with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).”
Unfortunately, the company’s response fails to answer the question as to why censorship software and controls exist on phones being sold in Lithuania in the first place. We have requested clarification on this point specifically and will update if we hear back.
Original Story 9/22:
The Defense Ministry of Lithuania is recommending that smartphones from Chinese brands be thrown away as quickly as possible following the discovery of built-in censorship on some handsets.
As Reuters reports, the recommendation was made by Defense Deputy Minister Margiris Abukevicius, who said, “Our recommendation is to not buy new Chinese phones, and to get rid of those already purchased as fast as reasonably possible.” It follows the discovery of “censorship capabilities” on phones offered by Xiaomi.
In particular, the Xiaomi Mi 10T 5G contains software that detects and censors terms including “Free Tibet”, “Long live Taiwan independence,” and “democracy movement.” The software is present, but disabled on phones sold in the European Union, but the Defense Ministry’s National Cyber Security Centre believes the software can be enabled remotely at any time.
The censorship controls can be used by any of the default system apps included on Xiaomi phones, including the default browser. A report released by the National Cyber Security Centre says there are 449 terms in Chinese that will be censored, but that the list is regularly updated by the company. Huawei was also flagged for a security flaw discovered on its P40 5G phone, but the company has responded, stating user data is not shared with others. Notably, OnePlus did not feature in the report.
Xiaomi was added to a US blacklist back in January, but by May the company had been removed from the list. This discovery in Lithuania could push the Department of Defense to take another look at Xiaomi to see if the same disabled censorship controls are included on phones sold in the US. Huawei, of course, has already been banned from the US market.
Originally published at https://www.pcmag.com.
