Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi Corp (小米) said yesterday that it is engaging a third-party expert to assess claims from Lithuania’s government that its phones carry a censoring feature.
“While we dispute the characterization of certain findings, we are engaging an independent third-party expert to assess the points raised in the report,” a Xiaomi spokesperson said in a statement.
The announcement comes after Lithuania’s defense ministry urged consumers to throw away Chinese phones last week, following a report published by Lithuania’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), alleging that Xiaomi phones have built-in censorship capabilities.
Xiaomi said at the time that its device “does not censor communications to or from its users.”
Xiaomi did not specify which third-party organization it was engaging to conduct the assessment. A spokesperson told Reuters that it was an organization based in Europe.
In response to the allegations of censorship, the company said it uses advertising software to shield users from certain content such as pornography and references that offend local users, a practice it described as standard in the industry.
The company also said that it was compliant with data privacy frameworks set by the International Standards Organization.
In its report, Lithuania’s NCSC alleged that flagship phones sold in Europe by Xiaomi have a built-in ability to detect and censor terms such as “Free Tibet,” “Long live Taiwan independence” or “democracy movement.”
The capability in Xiaomi’s Mi 10T 5G phone software had been turned off for the “European Union region,” but can be turned on remotely at any time, the report stated.
Xiaomi emerged as the top smartphone vendor in Europe for the first time in the second quarter of this year, shipping a record 12.7 million units in the continent, according to research firm Strategy Analytics.
The company, along with other Chinese rivals on the Android operating system, has enjoyed a surge in market share following the enforcement of US sanctions against Huawei Technologies Co (華為), which crippled its once-dominant smartphone division.
Relations between Lithuania and China have soured. China last month demanded that Lithuania withdraw its ambassador in Beijing and said it would recall its envoy to Vilnius after Taiwan announced that its mission in Lithuania would be called the Taiwanese Representative Office.
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