Lithuania says throw away Chinese phones due to censorship concerns
By Andrius Sytas September 22, 2021
https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/lithuania-says-throw-away-chinese-phones-due-censorship-concerns-2021-09-21/
VILNIUS, Sept 21 (Reuters) - Lithuania's Defense Ministry recommended that
consumers avoid buying Chinese mobile phones and advised people to throw away
the ones they have now after a government report found the devices had built-in
censorship capabilities.
Flagship phones sold in Europe by China's smartphone giant Xiaomi Corp have a
built-in ability to detect and censor terms such as "Free Tibet", "Long live
Taiwan independence" or "democracy movement", Lithuania's state-run
cybersecurity body said on Tuesday.
The capability in Xiaomi's Mi 10T 5G phone software had been turned off for the
"European Union region", but can be turned on remotely at any time, the Defence
Ministry's National Cyber Security Centre said in the report.
"Our recommendation is to not buy new Chinese phones, and to get rid of those
already purchased as fast as reasonably possible," Defence Deputy Minister
Margiris Abukevicius told reporters in introducing the report.
Xiaomi did not respond to a Reuters query for comment.
Relations between Lithuania and China have soured recently. China demanded last
month that Lithuania withdraw its ambassador in Beijing and said it would
recall its envoy to Vilnius after Taiwan announced that its mission in
Lithuania would be called the Taiwanese Representative Office. read more
Taiwanese missions in Europe and the United States use the name of the city
Taipei, avoiding a reference to the island itself, which China claims as its
own territory.
U.S. President Joe Biden's national security adviser Jake Sullivan spoke to
Lithuania's prime minister Ingrida Simonyte last week and stressed support for
her country in the face of pressure from China.
The National Cyber Centre's report also said the Xiaomi phone was sending
encrypted phone usage data to a server in Singapore. A security flaw was also
found in the P40 5G phone by China's Huawei (HWT.UL) but none was found in the
phone of another Chinese maker, OnePlus, it said.
Huawei's representative in the Baltics told the BNS news wire its phones do not
send user's data externally.
The report said the list of terms which could be censored by the Xiaomi phone's
system apps, including the default internet browser, currently includes 449
terms in Chinese and is continuously updated.
"This is important not only to Lithuania but to all countries which use Xiaomi
equipment," the Centre said in the report.
Reporting by Andrius Sytas in Vilnius Editing by Sonya Hepinstall
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