Lithuania: dear citizens, throw away your phones if they are Chinese, they censor you ..
The Lithuanian Ministry of Defense advised consumers to avoid buying Chinese cell phones and advised people to throw away the ones they have now, after a government report found the devices had built-in censorship capabilities.
The flagship phones sold in Europe by Chinese 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," he said. on Tuesday, the Lithuanian state agency for cyber security. .
The software functionality of Xiaomi's Mi 10T 5G phone has been deactivated for the European Union region, but can be activated remotely at any time, the ministry's national cybersecurity center said in the report. So, from a distance, China could potentially censor or condition what Europeans read.
"Our recommendation is not to buy new Chinese phones and get rid of those already purchased as quickly as possible," Deputy Defense Minister Margiris Abukevicius told reporters as he introduced the report.
Recently, relations between Lithuania and China have tightened precisely on the subject of Taiwan. China last month demanded that Lithuania withdraw its ambassador to Beijing and said it would recall its envoy in Vilnius after Taiwan announced that its mission in Lithuania would be called the Taiwan Representative Office.
The 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 territory and thus canceling any possible claims of independence.
US President Joe Biden's National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan spoke to Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė last week and stressed support for his country in the face of pressure from China. Moreover, in the EU, also for geographical reasons, the Baltic republics are the most faithful allies of the USA.
The report from the national computer center also claimed that the Xiaomi phone was sending encrypted data about the use of the phone to a server in Singapore. A security flaw was also found in the P40 5G phone from China's Huawei, but it was not found in the phone from another Chinese manufacturer, OnePlus. Therefore it is not a widespread practice in general.
Currently, the Xiaomi browser, according to the report, has 453 "Forbidden" terms, which are censored. A computer version of Orwell's New English.
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The article Lithuania: dear citizens, throw away your phones if they are Chinese, they censor you .. comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/la-lituania-cari-cittadini-gettate-via-i-vostri-telefoni-se-sono-cinesi-vi-censurano/ on Thu, 23 Sep 2021 06:00:04 +0000.