Lithuanian government warns about secret censorship features in Xiaomi phones

The Lithuanian Defense Ministry published a security audit on Wednesday for three popular 5G smartphone models manufactured in China, recommending that citizens avoid or stop using at least two of the three devices, citing privacy infringements and secret censorship capabilities. Xiaomi: Censorship module, surreptitious data collection. The most were found in the Xiaomi Mi 10T, where officials said they uncovered a secret censorship module that could detect and censor 449 keywords or groups of keywords in both Chinese and Latin characters related to sensitive topics inside China, such as "Free Tibet," "Voice of America," "Democratic Movement," "Longing Taiwan Independence," and others. Officials said this module was disabled inside Lithuania and the EU region, but they also found a function that could have allowed Xiaomi to silently enable the censorship module at any given time without the user's knowledge. Officials said they also found a second issue impacting Xiaomi phones, which also sent an encrypted SMS message to Xiaomi servers whenever the owner chose to use the Xiaomi Cloud service. Officials said they also found that the Xiaomi phone also collected up to 61 data points about the device and its owner via the Mi Browser app, information it sent to a Google Analytics account and to Chinese servers. Xiaomi did not return a request for comment sent by The Record seeking answers to the Lithuanian government's report.