Paris — The Democratic Republic of Congo has filed criminal complaints against Apple subsidiaries in France and Belgium, accusing the tech firm of using conflict minerals in its supply chain, lawyers for the Congolese government told Reuters. 

Congo is a major source of tin, tantalum and tungsten, so-called 3T minerals used in computers and mobile phones. But some artisanal mines are run by armed groups involved in massacres of civilians, mass rapes, looting and other crimes, according to U.N. experts and human rights groups. 

Apple does not directly source primary minerals and says it audits suppliers, publishes findings and funds bodies that seek to improve mineral traceability. 

Apple last year said it had “no reasonable basis for concluding” its products contain illegally exported minerals from conflict-hit zones. The tech giant has insisted it carefully verifies the origin of materials in its output. 

Its 2023 filing on conflict minerals to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said none of the smelters or refiners of 3T minerals or gold in its supply chain had financed or benefited armed groups in Congo or neighboring countries. 

But international lawyers representing Congo argue that Apple uses minerals pillaged from Congo and laundered through international supply chains, which they say renders the firm complicit in crimes taking place in Congo. 

In parallel complaints filed to the Paris prosecutor’s office and to a Belgian investigating magistrate’s office on Monday, Congo accuses local subsidiaries Apple France, Apple Retail France and Apple Retail Belgium of a range of offenses. 

These include covering up war crimes and the laundering of tainted minerals, handling stolen goods, and carrying out deceptive commercial practices to assure consumers supply chains are clean. 

“It is clear that the Apple group, Apple France and Apple Retail France know very well that their minerals supply chain relies on systemic wrongdoing,” says the French complaint, after citing U.N. and rights reports on conflict in east Congo. 

Belgium had a particular moral duty to act because looting of Congo’s resources began during the 19th-century colonial rule of its King Leopold II, Congo’s Belgian lawyer Christophe Marchand said. 

“It is incumbent on Belgium to help Congo in its effort to use judicial means to end the pillaging,” he said. 

The complaints, prepared by the lawyers on behalf of Congo’s justice minister, make allegations not just against the local subsidiaries but against the Apple group as a whole. 

France and Belgium were chosen because of their perceived strong emphasis on corporate accountability. Judicial authorities in both nations will decide whether to investigate the complaints further and bring criminal charges. 

In an unrelated case in March, a U.S. federal court rejected an attempt by private plaintiffs to hold Apple, Google, Tesla, Dell and Microsoft accountable for what the plaintiffs described as their dependence on child labor in Congolese cobalt mines. 

Minerals fuel violence 

Since the 1990s, Congo’s mining heartlands in the east have been devastated by waves of fighting between armed groups, some backed by neighboring Rwanda, and the Congolese military. 

Millions of civilians have died and been displaced. 

Competition for minerals is one of the main drivers of conflict as armed groups sustain themselves and buy weapons with the proceeds of exports, often smuggled via Rwanda, according to U.N. experts and human rights organizations. 

Rwanda denies benefiting from the trade, dismissing the allegations as unfounded. 

Among the appendices to Congo’s legal complaint in France was a statement issued by the U.S. State Department in July, expressing concerns about the role of the illicit trade in minerals from Congo, including tantalum, in financing conflict. 

The statement was a response to requests from the private sector for the U.S. government to clarify potential risks associated with manufacturing products using minerals extracted, transported or exported from eastern Congo, Rwanda and Uganda. 

Congo’s complaints focus on ITSCI, a metals industry-funded monitoring and certification scheme designed to help companies perform due diligence on suppliers of 3T minerals exported from Congo, Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda. 

Congo’s lawyers argue that ITSCI has been discredited, including by the Responsible Minerals Initiative (RMI) of which Apple is a member, and that Apple nevertheless uses ITSCI as a fig leaf to falsely present its supply chain as clean. 

The RMI, whose members include more than 500 companies, announced in 2022 it was removing ITSCI from its list of approved traceability schemes. 

In July, it said it was prolonging the suspension until at least 2026, saying ITSCI had not provided field observations from high-risk sites or explained how it was responding to an escalation of violence in North Kivu province, which borders Rwanda and is a key 3T mining area. 

ITSCI criticized the RMI’s own processes and defended its work in Congo as reliable. It has also rejected allegations in a 2022 report by campaigning group Global Witness entitled “The ITSCI Laundromat,” cited in Congo’s legal complaint in France, that it was complicit in the false labeling of minerals from conflict zones as coming from mines located in peaceful areas. 

Apple mentioned ITSCI five times in its 2023 filing on conflict minerals. The filing also made multiple mentions of the RMI, in which Apple said it had continued active participation and leadership but did not mention the RMI’s ditching of ITSCI. 

In its July statement, the U.S. State Department said flaws in traceability schemes have not garnered sufficient engagement and attention to lead to changes needed. 

Robert Amsterdam, a U.S.-based lawyer for Congo, said the French and Belgian complaints were the first criminal complaints by the Congolese state against a major tech company, describing them as a “first salvo” only. 

Some information for this report came from Agence France-Presse. 
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LONDON — European Union regulators said Tuesday they’re investigating whether TikTok breached the bloc’s digital rulebook by failing to deal with risks to Romania’s presidential election, which has been thrown into turmoil over allegations of electoral violations and Russian meddling.

The European Commission is escalating its scrutiny of the popular video-sharing platform after Romania’s top court canceled results of the first round of voting that resulted in an unknown far-right candidate becoming the front-runner.

The court made its unprecedented decision after authorities in the European Union and NATO member country declassified documents alleging Moscow organized a sprawling social media campaign to promote a long-shot candidate, Calin Georgescu.

“Following serious indications that foreign actors interfered in the Romanian presidential elections by using TikTok, we are now thoroughly investigating whether TikTok has violated the Digital Services Act by failing to tackle such risks,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a press release. “It should be crystal clear that in the EU, all online platforms, including TikTok, must be held accountable.”

The European Commission is the 27-nation European Union’s executive arm and enforces the bloc’s Digital Services Act, a sweeping set of regulations intended to clean up social media platforms and protect users from risks such as election-related misinformation. It ordered TikTok earlier this month to retain all information related to the election.

In the preliminary round of voting on Nov. 24 Georgescu was an outsider among the 13 candidates but ended up topping the polls. He was due to face a pro-EU reformist rival in a runoff before the court canceled the results.

The declassified files alleged that there was an “aggressive promotion campaign” to boost Georgescu’s popularity, including payments worth a total of $381,000 to TikTok influencers to promote him on the platform.

TikTok said it has “protected the integrity” of its platform over 150 elections around the world and is continuing to address these “industry-wide challenges.”

“TikTok has provided the European Commission with extensive information regarding these efforts, and we have transparently and publicly detailed our robust actions,” it said in a statement.

The commission said its investigation will focus on TikTok’s content recommendation systems, especially on risks related to “coordinated inauthentic manipulation or automated exploitation.” It’s also looking at TikTok’s policies on political advertisements and “paid-for political content.”

TikTok said it doesn’t accept paid political ads and “proactively” removes content for violating policies on misinformation.

The investigation could result in TikTok making changes to fix problems or fines worth up to 6% of the company’s total global revenue.
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President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Brendan Carr to lead the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates communications in the United States. Carr, an FCC commissioner since 2017, has taken aim at big tech and China’s influence on U.S. communications. VOA’s Dora Mekouar reports.
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Hundreds of thousands of Rhode Island residents’ personal and bank information, including Social Security numbers, were likely hacked by an international cybercriminal group asking for a ransom, state officials said on Saturday. 

In what Rhode Island officials described as extortion, the hackers threatened to release the stolen information unless they were paid an undisclosed amount of money. 

The breached data affects people who use the state’s government assistance programs and includes the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and healthcare purchased through the state’s HealthSource RI, Governor Dan McKee announced on Friday. 

Hackers gained access to RIBridges, the state’s online portal for obtaining social services earlier this month, the governor’s office said in a statement, but the breach was not confirmed by its vendor, Deloitte, until Friday. 

“Deloitte confirmed that there is a high probability that a cybercriminal has obtained files with personally identifiable information from RIBridges,” the governor’s office said in a statement on Saturday. 

A representative from McKee’s office was not immediately available to Reuters for comment. 

Anyone who has applied for or received benefits through those programs since 2016 could be affected. 

The state directed Deloitte to shut down RIBridges to remediate the threat, and for the time being, anyone applying for new benefits will have to do so on paper applications until the system is back up. 

Households believed to have been affected will receive a letter from the state notifying them of the problem and explaining steps to be taken to help protect their data and bank accounts. 
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WASHINGTON — A U.S. appeals court on Friday rejected an emergency bid by TikTok to temporarily block a law that would require its Chinese parent company ByteDance to divest the short-video app by January 19 or face a ban on the app.

TikTok and ByteDance on Monday filed the emergency motion with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, asking for more time to make its case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Friday’s ruling means that TikTok now must quickly move to the Supreme Court in an attempt to halt the pending ban.

The companies had warned that without court action, the law will “shut down TikTok — one of the nation’s most popular speech platforms — for its more than 170 million domestic monthly users.”

“The petitioners have not identified any case in which a court, after rejecting a constitutional challenge to an Act of Congress, has enjoined the Act from going into effect while review is sought in the Supreme Court,” the D.C. Circuit said.

TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Under the law, TikTok will be banned unless ByteDance divests it by January 19. The law also gives the U.S. government sweeping powers to ban other foreign-owned apps that could raise concerns about collection of Americans’ data.

The U.S. Justice Department argues “continued Chinese control of the TikTok application poses a continuing threat to national security.”

TikTok says the Justice Department has misstated the social media app’s ties to China, arguing its content recommendation engine and user data are stored in the U.S. on cloud servers operated by Oracle while content moderation decisions that affect U.S. users are made in the U.S.
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SYDNEY — Australia’s center-left government said on Thursday it planned new rules that would charge big tech firms millions of dollars if they did not pay Australian media companies for news hosted on their platforms.

The move piles pressure on global tech giants such as Facebook-owner Meta Platforms and Alphabet’s Google to pay publishers for content or face the risk of paying millions to continue operations in Australia.

“The news bargaining initiative will … will create a financial incentive for agreement-making between digital platforms and news media businesses in Australia,” Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services Stephen Jones told a news conference.

The platforms at risk will be significant social media platforms and search engines with an Australian-based revenue in excess of $160 million, he said.

The charge will be offset for any commercial agreements that are voluntarily entered into between the platforms and news media businesses, Jones said.

Tech companies condemned the plan.

“The proposal fails to account for the realities of how our platforms work, specifically that most people don’t come to our platforms for news content and that news publishers voluntarily choose to post content on our platforms because they receive value from doing so,” a Meta spokesperson said after Jones’ remarks.

A spokesperson for Google said the government’s decision “risks ongoing viability of commercial deals with news publishers in Australia.”

The proposed new rules come as Australia toughens its approach to the mostly U.S.-domiciled tech giants.

Last month it became the first country to ban children under the age of 16 from social media, in a move seen as setting a benchmark for other governments’ handling of Big Tech.

Canberra also plans to threaten the companies with fines for failing to stamp out scams.

Google, ByteDance through TikTok, and Meta through its various platforms, would fall within the scope of the charges under the new rules. However X, formerly Twitter, would not be covered, Jones said.

Blocking news

In 2021, Australia passed laws to make the U.S. tech giants, such as Google and Meta, compensate media companies for the links that lure readers and advertising revenue.

After the move, Meta briefly blocked users from reposting news articles, but later struck deals with several Australian media firms, such as News Corp and national broadcaster Australian Broadcasting Corp.

It has said since it will not renew those arrangements beyond 2024.

Meta, which also owns Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp, has been scaling back its promotion of news and political content globally to drive traffic, and says news links are now a fraction of users’ feeds.

This year it said it would discontinue the news tab on Facebook in Australia and the United States, adding that it had canceled the tab last year in Britain, France and Germany.

In 2023, Meta blocked users in Canada from reposting news content after its government took similar action.

Australia news organizations, including Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, are expected to benefit from the new rules.

Following Jones’ announcement, News Corp Australia Executive Chairman Michael Miller said he would contact Meta and TikTok immediately to seek a commercial relationship with News Corp Australia.

“I believe news publishers and the tech platforms should have relationships that benefit both parties on commercial and broader terms,” he said in a statement. 
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NAIROBI, KENYA — The United Nations, Microsoft and Kenya’s Ministry of Information last week launched a digital and artificial intelligence center in Nairobi to train African public servants and accelerate the development and use of online services.

Officials said the program — the Timbuktoo GreenTech Hub and Africa Centre for Competence for AI and Digital Skilling — aims to improve the skills of 100,000 government workers.

U.N. Development Program Regional Director Ahunna Eziakonwa said at the launch that better digital skills and resources will enable Africa to achieve technological progress.

“An inclusive public sector digital transformation drives efficiency and effectiveness and helps governments to enhance coordination of resources and information and strengthen data and code policymaking and implementation,” she said.

Kenyan President William Ruto said that more than 20,000 government services can be accessed online and that the digital transformation has made government work easier.

“This will help us streamline public service delivery and enhance transparency and efficiency, minimize opportunities for corruption and maximize visibility and mobilization of public revenue,” he said. “The transformative impact of this single initiative on citizens’ experience in accessing public services, along with the government’s capacity to effectively manage public resources, clearly illustrates the immense value of digital transformation.”

Governance experts say digital services offered online have improved citizens’ trust in public services and made the work of government employees faster, more accurate and more transparent.

However, the frequent power and internet blackouts that plague some African countries sometimes force government workers to resort to traditional paper and file systems.

Some workers have little experience with computers and feel that online glitches are slowing them down.

Michael Niyitegeka, team leader at Refactory, a software academy in Uganda that prepares youth for global tech work, said authorities must push workers to use the technology.

“Leadership has to be extremely firm in knowing how they want to use these technologies and invest in ensuring that people are working with it,” Niyitegeka said.

“We need to work on the entire system so the citizens can be brought to speed, and different users of these technologies as we are building need to be brought on board so that we are building together,” he said. “Otherwise, it will probably become a white elephant.”

Tech experts say that if developed correctly and with proper investment, then digital technology and artificial intelligence can transform communities.
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WASHINGTON — The United States slapped sanctions on a Chinese cybersecurity company and one of its employees Tuesday, accusing it of compromising more than 80,000 firewalls in a 2020 attack.

The U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement that it had sanctioned Sichuan Silence Information Technology Company and an employee named Guan Tianfeng over the April 2020 attack, which targeted firewalls around the world, including critical infrastructure in the U.S.

Over a three-day period, Guan exploited a vulnerability in a firewall product and proceeded to deploy malware against some 81,000 businesses around the world with the aim of stealing data, including usernames and passwords, while also attempting to infect the computers with ransomware, according to the Treasury Department.

More than 23,000 firewalls were in the United States, of which 36 were protecting “critical infrastructure companies’ systems,” the Treasury said.

“Today’s action underscores our commitment to exposing these malicious cyber activities … and to holding the actors behind them accountable for their schemes,” Bradley Smith, Treasury acting undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in a statement.

The Treasury, he said, “will continue to leverage our tools to disrupt attempts by malicious cyber actors to undermine our critical infrastructure.”

Alongside the sanctions, the Department of Justice has also unsealed an indictment against Guan and announced a reward of up to $10 million for information about the employee or company, according to the Treasury Department.
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