Xiaomi hired a cybersecurity expert over Lithuania’s censorship claim!

After denying the allegations, Xiaomi has now hired a third-party firm that's going to investigate the Lithuanian government claims.

File photo: Lithuania's Defence Deputy Minister Margiris Abukevicius and a Redmi smartphone

A third party company to investigate the built-in censorship issue of Xiaomi

A few days ago, we reported that Xiaomi responded to Lithuania's "built-in censorship" accusations. To recall, the said country's Defense Ministry is recommending consumers to throw away Chinese smartphones or avoid buying new ones.

Allegedly, the Defense Ministry said that the government found the devices had built-in censorship capabilities. It made an accusation that flagship phones sold in Europe by Xiaomi can detect and censor terms such as "Free Tibet", "Long live Taiwan independence", or democracy movement".

Xiaomi has immediately aired its side with a statement that it has never and will never restrict or block any user behavior. The statement also added that the tech giant fully respects and protects the rights of all users of its devices.

Now, there's a report that Xiaomi has now hired an expert in the cyber security field to assess Lithuania's allegation that its devices have censorship capabilities. However, the Xiaomi spokesperson did not divulge the identity of the third-party company it will be working with. There's an assumption that it will be a European organization with sufficient clout and expertise.

In addition to this, the Chinese tech giant said that its standard approach had been applied to some advertising applications. This is to protect its users from extreme content like pornography and references that may offend local users.

As of the moment, the  Lithuanian Defense Ministry perceives Xiaomi's claims as an admittance that it has blacklisted items within its content filtering. The institution is arguing that the list has a political agenda, possibly related to official positions from Beijing. 

On the other hand, Xiaomi continues to insist that it follows regulations of data privacy applicable in the European Union.

What do you think?

Sources: Reuters, GizmoChina