Citing security concerns, Lithuania bans Chinese airport baggage scanners

February 18, 2021 by 1 Comment

Vilnius International AirportCITING NATIONAL SECURITY GROUNDS, the government of Lithuania has canceled an agreement with a Chinese-owned company to supply baggage-scanning equipment at airports across the Baltic country. The Beijing-based company, Nuctech, is owned by Tsinghua Tongfang, which is in turn controlled by the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC). Tasked with managing China’s nuclear fuel supply and development program, CNCC is owned by the Chinese government.

Since its founding in 1997, Nuctech has become a major supplier of security-screening products and equipment in airports in Asia, Europe and Africa. Early in 2020, the company was awarded a competitive bid to install baggage-scanning equipment at several major Lithuanian airports, including those in Vilnius, Kaunas and Palanga. But in January of this year, it was reported that the United States government had approach several European governments with the aim of convincing them to drop Nuctech on security grounds. The Americans were claiming that passenger data collected by Nuctech could potentially be shared with the Chinese intelligence services, under a 2017 law that obligates state-owned companies to contribute to national intelligence gathering.

On Wednesday, following a closed-door meeting of the Lithuanian cabinet, a spokesman for the prime minister’s office announced that the government had “decided that the contract [with Nuctech] does not meet the interests of national security”. Earlier on Wednesday, a local news agency had quoted the United States ambassador to Lithuania, Robert Gilchrist, as saying that Washington welcomed the fact that Lithuania was reconsidering Nuctech’s role in airport security. Late on Wednesday, a Nuctech representative said the company failed to understand the Lithuanian government’s reasoning for canceling the agreement, since the scanning equipment used in Lithuanian airports would be manufactured in Poland, rather than in China.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 18 February 2021 | Permalink

Filed under A specialized intelligence website written by experts, since 2008 Tagged with , , , ,

One Response to Citing security concerns, Lithuania bans Chinese airport baggage scanners

  1. Pete says:
    February 18, 2021 at 22:59

    It may be a constant problem for a small country, like Lithuania, needing to rely on foreign manufacturers for any type of inherently complex security/electronic equipment.

    No only Chinese or Russian built equipment may have intelligence exploit “bugs” aka “extra chips”. One need only recall IntelNews’ March 3, 2020 article at https://intelnews.org/2020/03/03/01-2730/ entitled “Swiss government files criminal complaint over Crypto AG scandal involving CIA.” ;-(

    As the Lithuanian government is now shopping for new scanner/security equipment from new (non-Chinese) suppliers “Buyer Beware”.

We welcome informed comments and corrections. Comments attacking or deriding the author(s), instead of addressing the content of articles, will NOT be approved for publication.