US Supports Lithuanian Government Advising Citizens Not To Buy Chinese-made Phones

JAKARTA – Recently, the Lithuanian government instructed its citizens not to buy smartphones made in China. Residents who already have it are advised to turn off the cell phone.

The measure was implemented after the Lithuanian Ministry of Defense found a Chinese smartphone equipped with a default sensor, as reported by Reuters, on Wednesday, September 21.

In addition, the Lithuanian Cyber Security Agency also mentioned that Xiaomi phones sold in the European market share have the built-in ability to detect and censor certain terms such as “Free Tibet”, “Long live Taiwanese independence” and “democracy movement”.

The Lithuani Ministry of Defense claims to have turned off the Xiaomi Mi 10T 5G smartphone software for the "EU region". However, the innate censorship capability can still be reactivated anywhere and anytime.

"Our recommendation is not to buy new Chinese phones, and make already purchased phones as soon as possible," said Margiris Abukevicius, Lithuania's deputy defense minister.

According to a report from the National Center, Xiaomi smartphones can send user data to servers in Singapore. Apart from Xiaomi phones, they also discovered a security flaw in the Huawei P40 5G smartphone. However, this security flaw is not found in Chinese-made phones with other brands.

A number of applications in Xiaomi phones are reported to perform automatic censorship including through the default browser. There are currently 449 censorable glossary of terms in Chinese that can be censored and the list will continue to be updated.

"This is important not only for Lithuania but for all countries that use Xiaomi equipment," the National Cyber Center said.

In addition to the findings of these problems, relations between Lithuania and China are also deteriorating which has an impact on China's demands for Lithuania to withdraw its ambassador to Beijing. China is aware of the relationship between Taiwan and Lithuania.

In addition, the US government through national security adviser Jake Sullivan expressed its support for Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte in resisting pressure from China some time ago.