Earlier this week we reported that Russian-made YotaPhone 2 came with a backdoor that Russia’s FSB could use to spy on users. This “admission” was rather surprising given that the phone has been cleared for sale in the US and assuming the FCC has done their job, they would never have allowed such a device into their market.As it turns out that is not the case. The company has since come forward and claimed that the comments made by their CEO have been mistranslated and due to the mistranslation, it was misinterpreted to mean that the handset has a backdoor to allow FSB access. Instead it seems that what Rostech CEO Sergey Chemezov meant was that there were certain policies in Russia in which companies had to comply with the authorities should the need arise.
In a statement the company’s managing director Matthew Kelly made to the folks at Android Central, “The quotes attributed to Sergey Chemezov, the CEO of Rostech, were taken out of context and also poorly translated. His reference to the FSB relates to existing, twenty-year-old legislation that requires phone companies in Russia to cooperate with investigations into criminality or threats to national security.”
Kelly also claims that this policy extends to other companies who wants to sell their products in the country, such as Samsung, Apple, and etc., and added, “Yota Devices has not provided the FSB or any other security service with a “backdoor” to the personal information of YotaPhone users.” So if you still had your eye on the device, which is due for a release this summer in the US, you can rest assured that you will not be spied on (hopefully).
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