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China Security IT

German IT Security Watchdog Examines Xiaomi Mobile Phone (reuters.com) 16

Germany's federal cybersecurity watchdog, the BSI, is conducting a technical examination of a mobile phone manufactured by China's Xiaomi, a spokesperson for the interior ministry told Reuters on Wednesday. From the report: The spokesperson did not provide further details on what kind of examination the agency was carrying out. Lithanua's state cybersecurity body said last week that Xiaomi phones had a built-in ability to detect and censor terms such as "Free Tibet," "Long live Taiwan independence" or "democracy movement." Xiaomi said on Monday it was engaging a third-party expert to assess the allegations by Lithuania that its smartphones carry built-in censorship capabilities.
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German IT Security Watchdog Examines Xiaomi Mobile Phone

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  • They don't know? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sentiblue ( 3535839 ) on Wednesday September 29, 2021 @04:55PM (#61846027)

    Xiaomi said on Monday it was engaging a third-party expert to assess the allegations by Lithuania that its smartphones carry built-in censorship capabilities

    Am I getting this right? Xiaomi itself does NOT know whether their phones have censorship capability? They have to engage a 3rd party expert to assess?

    • Well if they know they didn't do that, having an independent expert confirm that counts a lot more than their own word would. Could be a preinstalled shovelware app doing it too, Xiaomi wouldn't control software updates companies install after manufacture. It's a good strategy if they're not guilty for one of those reasons.
      • Also, xiaomi is the biggest brand in India, and it does its manufacturing their too. It is important for me them to make sure they don't censor shit against China in India.

        - Types from my poco x3 plus, or is it pro?

    • They have to assess if there is proof of the allegations or not before they can risk responding! *rofl*

    • by jddimarco ( 1754954 ) on Wednesday September 29, 2021 @06:04PM (#61846261)
      No, Xiaomi knows that if they themselves say their phone doesn't censor, nobody will believe them. They need a third party, one clearly not beholden to Xiaomi, to say it, if they expect anyone to believe it.
  • I question how much of a complete test they could even do, when the device could easily be listening for some kind of signal that tells the device to start transmitting all data to servers in China. How would you ever detect that unless you had found a device that had been triggered to do so? It could be used very sparingly for high-value targets.

    • The phone has to listen to everyone to know when it lands in the hand of a high value target. One way to prescreen users for greater surveillance is to look for words like "Tibet" and "Taiwan" in calls and text messages. If they listen in sparingly then they can miss a lot of clues that the person is a high value target. Listening in on every phone would take lot of work and so it is quite conceivable they offload plenty of this work into programs running in the background on the phones, then "phone hom

  • China needs to be cut off economically until it can play by the same rules it expects of others. China is using the money it makes from sales to the free world to wage it's war on freedom. They are getting us to buy the rope to hang us with, and we let them get away with it.

    For a long time the USA has relied on China for rare earth elements needed in our electronics. In spite of the name they are not rare, they are actually quite abundant in the USA. Part of what has allowed China to dominate in electro

    • When the Chinese government collapses the people in side China will need outside help to pick up the pieces. The people of China are not our enemy, the government is our enemy. The people should not be punished for the actions of their government, they are victims of a government willing to listen in on phone calls as much as the rest of the world.

      Even if the gov falls and their people pick up the pieces, they will build another gov just like the one that fell. Unless there's an actual revolution to get rid of socialism/communism all together, this is never going to change. I was born and raised in a different communist country and I know this quite to the heart. As long as the people of this country worships chairman mao, it doesn't matter how many times the gov falls.

      • by MacMann ( 7518492 ) on Wednesday September 29, 2021 @08:59PM (#61846693)

        How many people worship chairman Mao when nobody is watching?

        China started making money after adopting some free market incentives, and sending their children to American universities. I suspect that there are too many Chinese that know what freedom looks like that when the system fails completely they will not be so quick to return to it.

        We saw people stand up to the government at Tiananmen Square, how many more demonstrations happened that we never saw? As I recall we know of what happened at Tiananmen Square only because a foreign news crew was there for an unrelated reason and they took video and photos without permission from the government. There are people that will not worship chairman Mao, we simply don't know how many.

        There's plenty we don't know about what is going on in China because the government controls what news get out as best they can. We do know that air and water pollution is horrible. We know that food and energy are becoming scarce. We have evidence of China committing genocide against minorities. We hear of people disappearing for speaking out against the government. Then comes many questions and suspicions about China's relationship to COVID-19. The Chinese government is quite clearly brutal, corrupt, and disliked by the people.

        I doubt I'll convince you differently just as you are not likely to convince me. So, I guess we will simply have to agree to disagree.

        I'll make another prediction, when the Chinese government collapses it will have a domino effect in the region. North Korea has been propped up by the Chinese government for a very long time. North Korea is a mess of a nation and has been able to keep from collapsing itself because China has been keeping the nation afloat. China does this because North Korea's existence serves the Chinese government for a number of political and military reasons. If China falls then so does North Korea. If North Korea falls then China could follow. This could be bad for Russia too.

        • I doubt I'll convince you differently

          It's not important or necessary to convince me of anything because truthfully I agreed with most of what you said and certainly hope that all what you said is true. I work with colleagues in the mainland and from what I can tell, the educated people do recognize the wrong things. Problem is news are not just shielded to the outsiders, it's shielded to their own citizens too. They don't have a clue what I'm talking about when I mentioned the genocide, they believed my country was a province of their countr

      • It didn’t work that way in Lithuania or Poland, why assume it would in China?

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