The entrenched censorship feature that mobilized the country emerged after the report prepared by the Lithuanian Ministry of Defense together with the National Cyber Security Center. According to the information disclosed in the report, Xiaomi has started to use the features of detecting and censoring some terms such as “Free Tibet”, “Long live Taiwan”, “democracy movements” on its smartphones in China.
The Ministry stated that they have determined that this feature is also found in Xiaomi Mi 10T 5G phones that are on sale in Europe, and that although this feature is disabled for now, the built-in censorship can be activated by remote intervention.
It turns out that Xiaomi phones are transmitting confidential data to a server in Singapore.
In the published report, it was stated that a total of 449 Chinese terms are on the censorship list, together with the terms we mentioned above, and it was stated that the built-in censorship was also applied to the activities made through the browser. The Ministry of Defense emphasized that citizens living in Lithuania should throw their Xiaomi phones in the trash and should not buy another phone of the same brand.
Deputy Defense Minister Margiris Abukevicius used the following statements in a statement to reporters after the publication of the report; “Our advice is not to buy new Chinese phones and to get rid of previously purchased ones as quickly as possible.”
The National Cyber Center stated that they detected that Xiaomi phones were sending encrypted phone usage data to a server in Singapore. While the same vulnerability was detected on the P40 5G phone, it was stated that OnePlus phones did not have features such as built-in censorship or secretly sending data.
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