Lithuania's Defence Ministry warned citizens against buying Chinese phones and recommended that they throw away the ones they have now as the phones had built-in censorship capabilities.
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, a Reuters report reads.
The report by the Lithuanian Defence ministry also said that the censorship feature had been turned off for the European market, but, could be turned on remotely any time.
China, last month, demanded that Lithuania withdraw its ambassador in Beijing and said it would recall its envoy to Vilnius, soon after Taiwan announced its new diplomatic mission in Lithuania. It also announced that it would be called the Taiwanese Representative Office.
Taiwanese missions in Europe and the United States use the name of the city Taipei. The reference to Taiwan is avoided. China claims the island as its territory.
US President Joe Biden's national security adviser Jake Sullivan spoke to Lithuania's Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte last week extending support for her country in the face of pressure from China.
A report by the Lithuanian state-run cybersecurity body said 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.
