Xiaomi phones will include a monitoring tool that will be “remotely activate at any time,” the Lithuanian government claims. Return to unbridled political media.
in a a report Dated the end of August 2021, the Lithuanian organization responsible for national cybersecurity accused Xiaomi of including a monitoring tool on its smartphones. More specifically, Xiaomi phones sold in Europe will have a unit capable of blocking some controversial content, using a list of keywords present on the phone. module that will be disabled by default with us, but can be activated in “At what time”, confirm the Lithuanian authorities.
«We recommend that you do not buy new Chinese phones and get rid of the ones you already bought as soon as possible“,” tell Reuters Deputy Minister of National Defense of the Republic of Lithuania. So should you get rid of your phone immediately?
China’s censorship tool
If we are confident of the report published by the Lithuanian authorities, we have learned that many system applications (including a web browser or theme management tool)”Regularly download the MiAdBlacklistConfig configuration file from a server in Singapore.»
This file will contain, according to the latest news, a list of 449 “Surnames, names and other information about the various groups of religious, political and social movementsAmong the words listed, we find terms related to the political situation in Tibet, Taiwan independence or pro-democracy movements. Indications that this unit is designed for smartphones sold in China, in order to comply with the wishes of the local government.
As the Lithuanian authorities wrote, the task of this tool is to “Filter media content displayed on the deviceSo it seems that censorship does not directly affect communication between people, but rather affects ads and other external content that is downloaded via the phone. However, the situation is not ideal, because if the browser hides content matching these words, then an entire part will be monitored from the web.
Xiaomi defends itself
In the face of the accusations of the Lithuanian government, which considers that this tool poses a problem for “All countries using Xiaomi equipmentAl-Sanea defends himself.
In a statement, the company denies the sentence and specifies that “Xiaomi devices do not monitor communications to and from their users. The company adds thatIt has never, and never will, restrict or block the habits of its smartphone users, such as searches, calls, surfing the Internet, or using third-party dialers.»
The company claims to abide by the GDPR verbatim and not to violate the rights of users. A somewhat agreed-upon letter that doesn’t go into much technical detail, when in particular the issue needs clarification. As it is, everyone can believe the builder or not.
This clash between Lithuanian authorities and China comes at a complex geopolitical moment. The two countries are at the center of the controversy, because Lithuania would have delegated an ambassador to Fatah, on its territory, Embassy on behalf of Taiwan. What upsets the Chinese government, which demands political control of the region.
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