Vilnius: Ministry of Defence in Lithuania has urged all citizens to throw away their Chinese phones. The Ministry issued this warning as they detected built-in censorship tools in these phones. The ministry pointed out two phones -Xiaomi and Huawei.
A report by the ministry claimed that these censorship tool had been turned off for the European market, but, could be turned on remotely any time. The report said that there are 449 terms that could be censored by Xiaomi phones and Xiaomi could add or remove these terms. In addition to this, a security flaw was discovered in the Huawei P40 5G and that the Xiaomi Mi 10T 5G was sending data of phone users to a server in Singapore. The built-in app in Xiaomi can detect and censor terms such as ‘Free Tibet’, ‘Long live Taiwan independence’ or ‘democracy movement’, claimed the report.
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But Xiaomi has rejected the allegations. ‘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)’, said the company. Huawei has also denied the allegations.
The diplomatic relationship between the two countries worsened earlier after China asked Lithuania to withdraw its ambassador in Beijing and decided to withdraw Chinese ambassador from Lithuania. China took this decision as Taiwan announced its new diplomatic mission in Lithuania named Taiwanese Representative Office. China has objected to the name ‘Taiwan’ as they claim that it the island is their territory.
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