Censor and surveillance tools in Xiaomi smartphones? experts answer

In September last year, Lithuanian officials filed accusations against Xiaomi, saying that its smartphones have a built-in censor that filters out requests that are objectionable or inconvenient for Beijing. Among other things, they also said that the devices send user data to servers in Singapore. For its part, Xiaomi stated that devices available in Europe and the global market do not have any tools for censorship, and also assured that they stand guard over confidentiality and privacy.

Censor and surveillance tools in Xiaomi smartphones? experts answer

To establish the truth, the German federal cybersecurity watchdog BSI conducted its own investigation and delivered its verdict. Experts have not found any evidence regarding the presence of any tools for censorship; in the program code of Xiaomi devices.

“As a result, BSI was unable to identify any anomalies requiring further investigation or other measures;” the German group said in a statement to Reuters.

This suggests that the experts did not find any evidence of the accusations of Lithuanian officials against Xiaomi. At the moment, the company has not commented on the results of the investigation, but there is no doubt that it like it.

Interestingly, not so long ago, the Taiwan National Communications Commission (NCC) also announced that it had discovered a built-in censor in Xiaomi smartphones. It turns out that the specialists of this department are wrong? Maybe the whole point is that China considers Taiwan to be its breakaway province and does not recognize its independence, which means that no one removes the tools for censoring from devices that seem to be sold on the territory of China.

Taiwan officials talk about surveillance and built-in censorship in Xiaomi devices

According to Taiwanese experts, the MiAdBlacklisConfigur program is available in the globalapi.ad.xiaomi.com servers to Xiaomi smartphones using seven standard applications. Its task is to censor requests and block links to sites that Beijing dislikes. For example, the blocking occurs on requests with the words “Taiwan independence”, “free Tibet”, “Tiananmen Square events” and other requests.

“Our test showed that a program [MiAdBlacklisConfigur] can be downloaded from the servers of globalapi.ad.xiaomi.com through seven built-in applications on the Mi 10T 5G smartphone, which targets a long list of politically sensitive terms and can block the smartphones from linking to related Web sites. These apps can also transmit users’ Web history to servers in Beijing,” the NCC said in a statement.

“Judging from the test results; we will continue our investigations to determine if Xiaomi Taiwan has compromised the interests of Taiwanese users; by invading their privacy. We will inform relevant agencies if the company contravenes regulations enforced by other administrative authorities;” the National Communications Commission (NCC) of Taiwan said.