Calvin Wankhede / Android Authority
TL;DR
- A German IT watchdog group didn’t find any evidence of alleged Xiaomi censorship tools on its phones.
- The group says it doesn’t need to investigate this matter further.
- The investigation began after Lithuania accused Xiaomi of having the ability to censor its phones.
Now, a German watchdog group hired to look into the matter has closed the case. The group found no evidence of any Xiaomi censorship tools within its devices.
“As a result, [we were] unable to identify any anomalies that would require further investigation or other measures,” the German group said in a statement (via Reuters).
The brief statement makes it pretty clear the group found nothing to back up Lithuania’s allegations. As a reminder, those allegations centered on supposed keyword lists within Xiaomi software. These lists contained terms sensitive to some Chinese citizens, such as “free Tibet,” “long live Taiwan independence,” and “democracy movement.” Theoretically, the software could identify these keywords and remove or otherwise manipulate them. However, it looks like that wasn’t actually happening.
We’ve reached out to Xiaomi for a statement on this news. The company did not get back to us before publishing, but we will update this article if and when it does.
