> Only months after Paranoia went online, the G8 came to Genoa. Many A/I participants were also involved with Indymedia Italy. They helped construct the movement’s media center, laying cables, configuring servers and building workstations through which protesters could report what was happening across the city. What followed was historic: enormous demonstrations, the police killing of Carlo Giuliani, indiscriminate beatings in the streets, torture and abuse inside the Bolzaneto barracks and the nighttime raid on the Diaz school. Official narratives competed with photographs, recordings and firsthand testimony transmitted through independent infrastructure. Genoa became one of the earliest major demonstrations to be documented from nearly every direction by its participants rather than exclusively through institutional media.
Very curious. My latest submission is the video of Larry Ellison with the "The police will be on their best behavior[,] Citizens will be on their best behavior because we're constantly recording and reporting everything that's going on". (It was triggered by a piece on TheOnion).
Turns out, other people had been recording events, so that a covering narrative may not prevail over the truth.
It is not unprecedented, but a lot of fools lauded moves like this when these kind of instruments were used with barely a legal net around them against islamic terrorism or cybercrime.
I'm not crying for no Al-Qaeda or 8chan, mind you. In this very year UN and ICJ officials have been targeted in a similar fashion though. When the pax americana ends like this, I don't know what else is needed for EU and Asia to raise tougher walls around the woes of any idiot hyped enough to be voted by USA citizens.
I think the same people who opposed a/i sanctions (not AI sanctions but they're really missing out by not exploiting that confusion) also opposed sanctions for """islamic terrorism""" and for """cybercrime""".
It's the logic of Jack Bauer taken to the end. "Come on, it's obvious who the bad guys are, who needs rules?" until suddenly it's not obvious anymore...
Monero is delisted from exchanges in Canada because the anonymity makes it impossible to comply with anti-money laundering regulations. It makes it a lot harder to acquire the coins or to turn them into liquidity. The government is also going hard against encryption with law c-22, which will make Signal stop providing service in the country.
If you have real operational security concerns, your provider shouldn't know anything about you; should in fact have bilateral shielding between themselves and you to prevent either counterparty from learning stuff. That's how Signal works.
But Signal requires a working phone number for registration and it knows the phone number. The backend could be modified at any time to store this somewhere else while maintaining end to end encryption between the two parties communicating on it. How can Signal prove continuously that it doesn’t store or disseminate the phone number? I know in past precedent it has told courts that it only has very limited information (date of account creation and the last time of account access).
There's all sorts of things any service provider could do to sleuth out who its users are. The implication of this OFAC determination is that A/I didn't need to sleuth anything out; they are accused of knowingly and deliberately assisting the PKK.
Right, I'm only moved to comment by the implications being drawn on this thread that Signal and WhatsApp are next. Different fact patterns and different legal standards.
I checked for an official PKK YouTube channel. I found that they don’t have one as they’re a designated foreign terrorist organization* and Google complies with that designation by not allowing them an official presence. Unsure about the others but I doubt any of those companies would allow an official account. Probably individuals that belong to that group have accounts but I don’t know that for sure.
* I did not make the designation, I know nothing about the PKK, I am only referencing it.
The article is quite long, but these two give a brief idea of what is going on:
a) According to that article, what it seems they are about:
> Its manifesto describes the project in explicitly political terms. A/I is antifascist, anti-capitalist and antimilitarist. It promotes free software, encryption, pseudonymity and the independent circulation of knowledge and cultural work. It reserves its limited, volunteer-run resources for people and projects broadly compatible with those principles rather than businesses, political parties, organized religions or institutions already possessing the means to make themselves heard.
b) And the issue U.S. has with them:
> The United States alleges that A/I supplies specialized digital architecture, encrypted communications and hosting to antifascist groups and other radical movements, including organizations already designated by the United States.
Well, you picked up one term they throw around. Anti-capitalist is another - they oppose the very system they are trying to use and exist within. Maybe not violently, but hardly can one expect sympathies, especially from system itself.
They also support ie PPK. There is this general sentence in law:
> Providing financial, material, or technological support for, or goods and services to or in support of, an act of terrorism.
Any state, EU including, treats such entities with utmost hostility. I have no stance on Israel vs Palestine topic (as in, both sides are abhorable to the core and none is better for different reasons) but to expect any form of kindness to such entity in the very system they are against is... out of touch with reality.
An action very much expected and in line regardless of who is currently in power - if not please explain to me / others why I see things incorrectly.
I clicked around a bit, read the manifesto, I still have no idea what these people do. I guess they claim to have been around for a while, but a bunch of the links don't work and the manifesto has definitely been updated to reflect 2026 opinions.
> A/I was born over 20 years ago to provide internet support (through website hosting, e-mail accounts, mailing lists, chat, blogs, and much more) to activists and collectives coming from the world of grassroot and social movements.
they are a group of people providing services to activists. services include email, web hosting, chat, and other anonymity services. (see https://www.inventati.org/services/)
> The A/I Collective exclusively offers its tools and services to radical left-wing actors and manually vets all potential users for ideological affinity before granting them access to its infrastructure.
> We support individuals, collectives, communities and groups whose political and social activities fit within this worldview and who share with us some fundamental principles: anti-fascism, anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-militarism
I suspect they have some "not mainstream" political views; although I think understanding what these views are requires more in-depth reading of the blogs that they host.
Yeah, that says pretty much nothing about what they do. It reads like an enterprise tech company webpage saying "we provide solutions to help transform your company into the digital age".
I would say they are pretty "mainstream" (or very widespread) in some territories. I have seen bartenders wearing those 'anti-' terms on their t-shirts at work.
Autistici/Inventati is an Italian collective, active since around 2001, that runs free digital services for activists, grassroots groups and anyone who wants to communicate without being profiled.
It provides email accounts, mailing lists, blogs, websites, chat and VPN access.
Obviously not to fascists, and if you look at their website they make it very clear that you need to align ideologically and explain why and how you will use their services
> The State Department on Wednesday designated three groups based in Europe, including two that advocate Palestinian rights, as transnational terrorist organizations.
> The move is part of the Trump administration’s fight against what it calls a “resurgence of far-left political terrorism” worldwide, a focus that many security experts say is disproportionate.
> In a statement, the department said that it would impose sanctions on Palestine Action, which is based in Britain and organizes acts of support for Palestinians and opposition to Israeli policies; Masar Badil, another pro-Palestinian group with branches in Western Europe and Canada; and Autistici/Inventati, known as A/I Collective, which is based in Italy and offers free digital tools to leftist activists around the world.
a/I collective in the OP is the third on this list.
> based in Italy and offers free digital tools to leftist activists around the world
Palestine Action has been designated a terrorist group in the UK as well after sabotaging military aircraft (the article says they sprayed paint, but does not say it was sprayed inside jet engines, rendering them inoperable). Masar Badil supports "armed struggle". One of the other groups ("hammer") recently designated a terrorist group (and linked to A/I Collective in another article I read ) got its name by attacking people in Germany with hammers.
Designating A/I Collective a terrorist group is different as it is not directly supporting violence, but it is providing free services to people who do, and it says it provides services to groups its aim is to "provide support exclusively to individuals or groups we feel we have an affinity with.". On the other hand their terms forbid "military use" which is broadly defined enough to rule out terrorism.
I think its likely they do have sympathy for violent groups, n the other hand, unless they have been going out of their way to support violence in some way I do not see reasonable grounds for banning them. Lots of commercial services have dodgy users. My fear is that is is heading in the direction of "if you do not hand info to the US authorities on demand you will be deemed a terrorist"
You have a very nuanced take that I broadly agree with. I would add that they were probably targeted for political reasons, it's not like the current administration is going out of their way to tackle right wing "terrorism".
> Palestine Action has been designated a terrorist group in the UK as well after sabotaging military aircraft
This is already an extreme perversion of justice all on its own. Damaging military equipment is absolutely outside any useful definition of terrorism. This is simply armed conflict.
Damaging property for political ends has been part of the definition in the UK, and I think the US, for decades. I would say the case for targetting military equipment is stronger than for damaging most other things.
> This is simply armed conflict.
Armed conflict by residents and citizens against the state is usually a serious criminal offense everywhere.
> Damaging property for political ends has been part of the definition in the UK, and I think the US, for decades.
Does that include property in Gaza, the West Bank or Lebanon? Because if the people who spray painted something are "terrorists", I want to know what the people who wiped Rafah off the face of the earth are called.
> Armed conflict by residents and citizens against the state is usually a serious criminal offense everywhere.
I think it’s worth considering that you’re much more likely to be a resident or a citizen than a state when you’re deciding how you feel about these kinds of things.
Damaging military equipment is a military end, not a political one. If it were otherwise, then a military attacking a military would definitionally be terrorism. At that point, you've removed the utility of the word "terrorism" from English and made it synonymous with "armed conflict."
Terrorism being done chiefly to change policies by terrorizing people through symbolic acts is a constrained, generally-accepted definition of terrorism.
Contrast with 9/11, where symbols of American capitalism, filled with civilians, were attacked in order to terrify people who have nothing to do with those buildings into supporting changes in policy that hurt the US.
Parler experienced a government coordinated shutdown across app stores and infrastructure providers like AWS.
I’m not sure what distinction you’re trying to make, when their infrastructure (AWS) was shut off due to the government labeling them terrorists due to some users (who Parler had banned) using the service.
Did the government force AWS to shut them off or just ask nicely? Hard to say. Any message from the government comes with implied threats. We'd only find it which was the case, if AWS had refused and the government had either punished AWS or not.
Can you see how it's different from an explicit sanction or an arrest?
In some ways (not all, of course) an implicit demand from the government is worse than an explicit one. An explicit one at least puts all the cards on the table.
In threads about the Russian war if you mention that the US has done worse your comments are removed and people complain about "whataboutism".
In this thread, on the other hand, people keep bringing up that the US has done worse but those comments are upvoted and there is no mention of "whataboutism" in the entire thread.
Remember, Trump and his cultists are symptoms -- not the cause. I.E. Cuba's embargo was in place long before the orange buffoon, and that is the same force at play here. Fear that the people will get a taste of a fairer, more just alternative.
> “are you antifa or are you fa?”
As far as I can tell, there were no credible criminal charges against this group, except that they are effective organizers on the opposite side of political spectrum. In the White House’s deranged logic, this qualifies them to be officially designated as domestic terrorists [1].
Can we all agree that this is an assault on the First Amendment?
I don't know, but they did say a month or two ago that they discovered Iran pivoted from funding their normal terrorist groups in the west since the US and EU cracked down on it so hard domestically, to funding more radical leftist groups since politicians were turning a blind eye to them.
Given the timing around putting economic pressure on Iran, I'm assuming that they had some financial connection to Iran.
Given administration's obsession with Antifa being in the room with them at all times, it's impossible to take anything they say in relation to this as even close to factual.
Keep in mind we're talking about communications services here, and one focusing on political speech at that.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
In general I think the free lunch of centrally hosted services and persistent doxxable identities is nearing a close. It was inevitable that governments would meddle more, and more, and more - implicitly treating communications are something other than speech due to how encompassing the digital world has become - and now here we are.
There is a law (18 U.S.C. § 2339B) that says you cant knowingly provide material support for designated foreign terrorist organizations. A law firm wanted to provide financial support and legal services to some, including the PKK (the same group A/I was accused of helping). They argued the federal law violated their first amendment rights.
The court concludes that the first amendment doesn't protect your ability to provide material support including services and communication equipment and the law still stands today.
Im curious. How would you argue the first amendment protects knowingly providing material support to designated foreign terrorist organizations?
The current United States government is very keen on pushing the idea that there is a vast and shadowy international left-wing conspiracy waging war on it.
It was only true all the other times over the past 100 years, but not this time! Trust me, I'm an expert of all world secrets, but somehow no government has hired me to get my opinion! This is nothing like back in the 70s when leftists were causing 5 bombings every single day inside the US. Gosh, we're in the future now compared to then!
China might execute more people than the rest of the world combined, be interfering in the world at historic levels, building out its military with unprecedented speed and cooperating with cartels to gain control in South America while flooding the US with lethal drugs, but they don't count, because I make the rules!
Iran and communist billionaires might be funding leftist violence inside the US, but who cares, violence is legal protest, right?
The numerous successful and unsuccessful assassination attempts against conservatives don't count either, because assassination for political reasons isn't terrorism... probably? That's like, some other kind of thing!
And remember, if we caught it before it happened, it doesn't count cause I say so.
> Our financial strategy relies exclusively on voluntary donations.
That is not a sustainable strategy in the long term. Sure after this news they will get lots of donations, but long term it is not something that is realistic.
Since they are now "sanctioned" by the US you cannot legally donate to them even if you wanted to...*[0]
[0] *Unless you now know why this collective needs crypto more than ever.
A good friend of mine was charged with providing material support to terrorists for providing similar donations. And all his donations were prior to the US designating the recipients as terrorists. The government's arguments were "Yes yes, but you knew what you were supporting even though we hadn't designated them as such..."
Naive world view. They also filed other less serious charges against him (of which he may have been guilty). He intended to plead "Not guilty", but after 2.5 years of him being held before trial[1], they offered him a deal. Plead guilty and get 5 years, including time served.
He likely would have beaten the terrorism charges, but for the lesser charges it wasn't clear that he'd get a better prison sentence than the one he was being offered.
He took the deal and pleaded guilty.
Also, lawyers cost money - perhaps he couldn't afford to keep fighting through a trial. I also have another friend who had the same charges leveled against him (not for donations, but volunteering services). He did fight the charges and got acquitted. I don't know if it's true, but I heard it cost him well over $1M for his legal defense.
[1] Trials like these take a long time to prepare for, by both parties.
"The Autistici Inventati is an Italy-based far-left organization that provides a range of technological tools and services to violent left-wing extremist groups, including website hosting on foreign servers, encrypted email accounts, chat and video conferencing, and digital architecture associated with its “Noblogs” platform. Autistici Inventati identifies itself as an “anti-fascist” and “anti-militarist” organization opposed to capitalism and exclusively provides its services to vetted individuals, collectives, and groups it perceives to be aligned with its ideology, including to sanctioned terrorist organizations such as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been designated by the United States, United Kingdom, and European Union for its use of terrorist tactics leading to thousands of deaths in Türkiye, Iraq, and Syria since its establishment in 1984.
Autistici Inventati is being designated pursuant to E.O. 13224, as amended, for having materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods and services to or in support of, an act of terrorism."
How quaint. The MEK (Iranian People's Mudjahheddin) were designated as a terrorist organization but collected money in EU streets all the time. Now they are useful against Khamenei.
The US would also like to use the equivalent of the PKK in the large Kurdish part of Iran against Khamenei.
Nothing to say of using the PKK rebranding of SDF in Syria as well as receiving "global terrorist" Al Jolani in the White House.
In the USA - the consequences should be only related to USA pertinent actors. The newspapers in Italy say, "there is no judgement against them in Italy".
• Bank accounts and payment processing.
• U.S.-linked donations and fundraising services.
• Hosting, cloud infrastructure and upstream network services.
• Domain registration and related technical services.
• Certificate, security and email-delivery accounts.
• Software and communications services.
• Relationships with non-U.S. providers frightened by American secondary sanctions.
• Access for people in the United States who currently use A/I’s services.
No, because they don't want to be banned from banks. With few exceptions, the US has power over all global financial systems. Also tier 1 ISPs (even the European ones), which trickles down to all ISPs.
> Only months after Paranoia went online, the G8 came to Genoa. Many A/I participants were also involved with Indymedia Italy. They helped construct the movement’s media center, laying cables, configuring servers and building workstations through which protesters could report what was happening across the city. What followed was historic: enormous demonstrations, the police killing of Carlo Giuliani, indiscriminate beatings in the streets, torture and abuse inside the Bolzaneto barracks and the nighttime raid on the Diaz school. Official narratives competed with photographs, recordings and firsthand testimony transmitted through independent infrastructure. Genoa became one of the earliest major demonstrations to be documented from nearly every direction by its participants rather than exclusively through institutional media.
https://cavallette.noblogs.org/2026/08/10083/2
Very curious. My latest submission is the video of Larry Ellison with the "The police will be on their best behavior[,] Citizens will be on their best behavior because we're constantly recording and reporting everything that's going on". (It was triggered by a piece on TheOnion).
Turns out, other people had been recording events, so that a covering narrative may not prevail over the truth.
Everyone’s missing the big picture here which is that this targeting of infrastructure providers as “terrorists” is unprecedented and concerning: https://decode39.com/16319/autistici-inventati-case-sets-a-n...
If a radical group sets up shop on I2P, are I2P users and devs now terrorists? This is a problem.
What about Monero users/devs? Veilid? Tox? Signal?
It is not unprecedented, but a lot of fools lauded moves like this when these kind of instruments were used with barely a legal net around them against islamic terrorism or cybercrime.
I'm not crying for no Al-Qaeda or 8chan, mind you. In this very year UN and ICJ officials have been targeted in a similar fashion though. When the pax americana ends like this, I don't know what else is needed for EU and Asia to raise tougher walls around the woes of any idiot hyped enough to be voted by USA citizens.
I think the same people who opposed a/i sanctions (not AI sanctions but they're really missing out by not exploiting that confusion) also opposed sanctions for """islamic terrorism""" and for """cybercrime""".
It's the logic of Jack Bauer taken to the end. "Come on, it's obvious who the bad guys are, who needs rules?" until suddenly it's not obvious anymore...
You mean like when cloudflare was pressured by the government(s) to terminate daily stormer?
> 8chan
8chan didn't even do shit
Monero is delisted from exchanges in Canada because the anonymity makes it impossible to comply with anti-money laundering regulations. It makes it a lot harder to acquire the coins or to turn them into liquidity. The government is also going hard against encryption with law c-22, which will make Signal stop providing service in the country.
They will only catch the amateurs. But they can pat themselves on the back I guess that did something.
Poor government has to fight crime the old fashioned way.
Ridiculous.
It's just incredible how spiteful the federal government is towards its constituency
Not really. It's not like they're going after actual terrorists.
In a much lighter but similar move, Suno is now associating exporting generated music with the behavior of "bad actors."
If you have real operational security concerns, your provider shouldn't know anything about you; should in fact have bilateral shielding between themselves and you to prevent either counterparty from learning stuff. That's how Signal works.
But Signal requires a working phone number for registration and it knows the phone number. The backend could be modified at any time to store this somewhere else while maintaining end to end encryption between the two parties communicating on it. How can Signal prove continuously that it doesn’t store or disseminate the phone number? I know in past precedent it has told courts that it only has very limited information (date of account creation and the last time of account access).
There's all sorts of things any service provider could do to sleuth out who its users are. The implication of this OFAC determination is that A/I didn't need to sleuth anything out; they are accused of knowingly and deliberately assisting the PKK.
Impossible for a public thing though, noblogs.org will always be traceable to where noblogs.org is hosted because that's how the packets get there.
You can maintain much better opsec in a two way communication than a broadcast.
Right, I'm only moved to comment by the implications being drawn on this thread that Signal and WhatsApp are next. Different fact patterns and different legal standards.
Isn't it just as likely they are using facebook, instagram, and tiktok?
I checked for an official PKK YouTube channel. I found that they don’t have one as they’re a designated foreign terrorist organization* and Google complies with that designation by not allowing them an official presence. Unsure about the others but I doubt any of those companies would allow an official account. Probably individuals that belong to that group have accounts but I don’t know that for sure.
* I did not make the designation, I know nothing about the PKK, I am only referencing it.
There is also an article on we will free us [1] if you want to dive deeper into that rabbit hole.
[1] https://www.wewillfreeus.org/the-server-called-paranoia-defe...
The article is quite long, but these two give a brief idea of what is going on:
a) According to that article, what it seems they are about:
> Its manifesto describes the project in explicitly political terms. A/I is antifascist, anti-capitalist and antimilitarist. It promotes free software, encryption, pseudonymity and the independent circulation of knowledge and cultural work. It reserves its limited, volunteer-run resources for people and projects broadly compatible with those principles rather than businesses, political parties, organized religions or institutions already possessing the means to make themselves heard.
b) And the issue U.S. has with them:
> The United States alleges that A/I supplies specialized digital architecture, encrypted communications and hosting to antifascist groups and other radical movements, including organizations already designated by the United States.
So anti-fascism ist deemed an extreme movement by the US government? What does that say about them?
Looks like you missed it when the US did this exact thing a year ago
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/desi...
Well, you picked up one term they throw around. Anti-capitalist is another - they oppose the very system they are trying to use and exist within. Maybe not violently, but hardly can one expect sympathies, especially from system itself.
They also support ie PPK. There is this general sentence in law:
> Providing financial, material, or technological support for, or goods and services to or in support of, an act of terrorism.
Any state, EU including, treats such entities with utmost hostility. I have no stance on Israel vs Palestine topic (as in, both sides are abhorable to the core and none is better for different reasons) but to expect any form of kindness to such entity in the very system they are against is... out of touch with reality.
An action very much expected and in line regardless of who is currently in power - if not please explain to me / others why I see things incorrectly.
Just because you call yourself the "Anti-Badguys Group" doesn't mean you can't commit acts of terrorism.
Do review your logic.
Now since "potential" is not a crime, list the acts that merit the label.
define terrorism in this context
Anti-fascist isn't a group, it's an adjective.
Seems like this should be a/the top level link
Could the persons that mention the PKK all over this thread kindly find links now that noblogs.org is partly dysfunctional and autistici.org is down?
Google Search yields a very small amount of third party support for the PKK, all unreachable now.
I cannot find any evidence at all and neither can LLMs that this organization has ever directly supported the PKK or hosted a PKK website.
I clicked around a bit, read the manifesto, I still have no idea what these people do. I guess they claim to have been around for a while, but a bunch of the links don't work and the manifesto has definitely been updated to reflect 2026 opinions.
What is this?
The "About" page seems fairly clear:
> A/I was born over 20 years ago to provide internet support (through website hosting, e-mail accounts, mailing lists, chat, blogs, and much more) to activists and collectives coming from the world of grassroot and social movements.
i thought the page says it pretty clearly.
they are a group of people providing services to activists. services include email, web hosting, chat, and other anonymity services. (see https://www.inventati.org/services/)
They host blogs and email used by many activists.
It is intentionally vague. From the State Dept:
> The A/I Collective exclusively offers its tools and services to radical left-wing actors and manually vets all potential users for ideological affinity before granting them access to its infrastructure.
I don't trust the US State Department to tell the truth. At this point, it's like citing a Wikipedia edited entirely by bad faith actors.
Did you click on https://www.inventati.org/about ? (I also tried reading the manifesto first.)
From it:
> We support individuals, collectives, communities and groups whose political and social activities fit within this worldview and who share with us some fundamental principles: anti-fascism, anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-militarism
I suspect they have some "not mainstream" political views; although I think understanding what these views are requires more in-depth reading of the blogs that they host.
Yeah, that says pretty much nothing about what they do. It reads like an enterprise tech company webpage saying "we provide solutions to help transform your company into the digital age".
> some "not mainstream" political views
I would say they are pretty "mainstream" (or very widespread) in some territories. I have seen bartenders wearing those 'anti-' terms on their t-shirts at work.
It’s a sad day when antifascism is considered not mainstream
The US govt is trying to brand "antifascism" as a terrorist ideology. They host antifa stuff.
Autistici/Inventati is an Italian collective, active since around 2001, that runs free digital services for activists, grassroots groups and anyone who wants to communicate without being profiled.
It provides email accounts, mailing lists, blogs, websites, chat and VPN access.
Is it truly anyone, or only anyone that politically aligns with them?
Obviously not to fascists, and if you look at their website they make it very clear that you need to align ideologically and explain why and how you will use their services
https://www.inventati.org/donate
https://en.liberapay.com/autistici.org/
For those like me who don't have context, here is the New York Times article on this recent news / event
https://archive.fo/e8Gss
> The State Department on Wednesday designated three groups based in Europe, including two that advocate Palestinian rights, as transnational terrorist organizations.
> The move is part of the Trump administration’s fight against what it calls a “resurgence of far-left political terrorism” worldwide, a focus that many security experts say is disproportionate.
> In a statement, the department said that it would impose sanctions on Palestine Action, which is based in Britain and organizes acts of support for Palestinians and opposition to Israeli policies; Masar Badil, another pro-Palestinian group with branches in Western Europe and Canada; and Autistici/Inventati, known as A/I Collective, which is based in Italy and offers free digital tools to leftist activists around the world.
a/I collective in the OP is the third on this list.
> based in Italy and offers free digital tools to leftist activists around the world
Palestine Action has been designated a terrorist group in the UK as well after sabotaging military aircraft (the article says they sprayed paint, but does not say it was sprayed inside jet engines, rendering them inoperable). Masar Badil supports "armed struggle". One of the other groups ("hammer") recently designated a terrorist group (and linked to A/I Collective in another article I read ) got its name by attacking people in Germany with hammers.
Designating A/I Collective a terrorist group is different as it is not directly supporting violence, but it is providing free services to people who do, and it says it provides services to groups its aim is to "provide support exclusively to individuals or groups we feel we have an affinity with.". On the other hand their terms forbid "military use" which is broadly defined enough to rule out terrorism.
I think its likely they do have sympathy for violent groups, n the other hand, unless they have been going out of their way to support violence in some way I do not see reasonable grounds for banning them. Lots of commercial services have dodgy users. My fear is that is is heading in the direction of "if you do not hand info to the US authorities on demand you will be deemed a terrorist"
> I think its likely they do have sympathy for violent groups
The US regime is an extremely violent group, so I that's certainly the issue.
You have a very nuanced take that I broadly agree with. I would add that they were probably targeted for political reasons, it's not like the current administration is going out of their way to tackle right wing "terrorism".
> Palestine Action has been designated a terrorist group in the UK as well after sabotaging military aircraft
This is already an extreme perversion of justice all on its own. Damaging military equipment is absolutely outside any useful definition of terrorism. This is simply armed conflict.
Damaging property for political ends has been part of the definition in the UK, and I think the US, for decades. I would say the case for targetting military equipment is stronger than for damaging most other things.
> This is simply armed conflict.
Armed conflict by residents and citizens against the state is usually a serious criminal offense everywhere.
> Damaging property for political ends has been part of the definition in the UK, and I think the US, for decades.
Does that include property in Gaza, the West Bank or Lebanon? Because if the people who spray painted something are "terrorists", I want to know what the people who wiped Rafah off the face of the earth are called.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafah
> Armed conflict by residents and citizens against the state is usually a serious criminal offense everywhere.
I think it’s worth considering that you’re much more likely to be a resident or a citizen than a state when you’re deciding how you feel about these kinds of things.
> Damaging property for political ends
Damaging military equipment is a military end, not a political one. If it were otherwise, then a military attacking a military would definitionally be terrorism. At that point, you've removed the utility of the word "terrorism" from English and made it synonymous with "armed conflict."
Terrorism being done chiefly to change policies by terrorizing people through symbolic acts is a constrained, generally-accepted definition of terrorism.
Contrast with 9/11, where symbols of American capitalism, filled with civilians, were attacked in order to terrify people who have nothing to do with those buildings into supporting changes in policy that hurt the US.
And as they did not wear uniforms they should have been shot on the spot.
Are you sure you want to say it's armed conflict? That makes it legitimate to kill members of Palestine Action.
Do you think that's a different understanding of the situation than the one that the state currently has?
Is it not "legitimate" in the same way to kill terrorists?
Thank you! Kind of nuts they posted this with that title but no explanation.
I guess bombing them got some pushback.
Everyone's a terrorist nowadays.
Remember when HN was cheering on wiping Parler from the Internet via App Store manipulation, justified by vague "TOS" violations?
Do you see how a removal from a private app store, while bad, is different from an arrest or a sanction?
Parler experienced a government coordinated shutdown across app stores and infrastructure providers like AWS.
I’m not sure what distinction you’re trying to make, when their infrastructure (AWS) was shut off due to the government labeling them terrorists due to some users (who Parler had banned) using the service.
Did the government force AWS to shut them off or just ask nicely? Hard to say. Any message from the government comes with implied threats. We'd only find it which was the case, if AWS had refused and the government had either punished AWS or not.
Can you see how it's different from an explicit sanction or an arrest?
In some ways (not all, of course) an implicit demand from the government is worse than an explicit one. An explicit one at least puts all the cards on the table.
I think these are very different things, private company's actions vs government actions.
"HN cheering", true or not, doesn't really matter in the end, either.
https://freethoughtblogs.com/atrivialknot/2026/05/05/the-goo...
In threads about the Russian war if you mention that the US has done worse your comments are removed and people complain about "whataboutism".
In this thread, on the other hand, people keep bringing up that the US has done worse but those comments are upvoted and there is no mention of "whataboutism" in the entire thread.
> US has done worse
They have not.
the asymmetric deployment of "whataboutism!" is hypocrisy about hypocrisy
seems like PIR (the .org registry) now also suspended their main domain: https://www.whois.com/whois/autistici.org (it is on serverHold)
Remember, Trump and his cultists are symptoms -- not the cause. I.E. Cuba's embargo was in place long before the orange buffoon, and that is the same force at play here. Fear that the people will get a taste of a fairer, more just alternative. > “are you antifa or are you fa?”
As far as I can tell, there were no credible criminal charges against this group, except that they are effective organizers on the opposite side of political spectrum. In the White House’s deranged logic, this qualifies them to be officially designated as domestic terrorists [1].
Can we all agree that this is an assault on the First Amendment?
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/desi...
The first amendment only applies inside the US. The US is allowed to cancel the speech of foreigners.
And murder foreigners, of course. It's allowed in the Constitution!
Yes, which is why the 2013 drone strikes crossed a line by openly murdering Americans.
I don't know, but they did say a month or two ago that they discovered Iran pivoted from funding their normal terrorist groups in the west since the US and EU cracked down on it so hard domestically, to funding more radical leftist groups since politicians were turning a blind eye to them.
Given the timing around putting economic pressure on Iran, I'm assuming that they had some financial connection to Iran.
That seems hugely speculative without any supporting evidence.
Given administration's obsession with Antifa being in the room with them at all times, it's impossible to take anything they say in relation to this as even close to factual.
Actual link: https://cavallette.noblogs.org/2026/08/10076
Title: A Statement by A/I Collective About US Sanctions
Keep in mind we're talking about communications services here, and one focusing on political speech at that.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
In general I think the free lunch of centrally hosted services and persistent doxxable identities is nearing a close. It was inevitable that governments would meddle more, and more, and more - implicitly treating communications are something other than speech due to how encompassing the digital world has become - and now here we are.
There is the absolutely perfect Supreme Court case that ruled against your theory.
Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/561/1
There is a law (18 U.S.C. § 2339B) that says you cant knowingly provide material support for designated foreign terrorist organizations. A law firm wanted to provide financial support and legal services to some, including the PKK (the same group A/I was accused of helping). They argued the federal law violated their first amendment rights.
The court concludes that the first amendment doesn't protect your ability to provide material support including services and communication equipment and the law still stands today.
Im curious. How would you argue the first amendment protects knowingly providing material support to designated foreign terrorist organizations?
The current United States government is very keen on pushing the idea that there is a vast and shadowy international left-wing conspiracy waging war on it.
This is, to be clear, lying nonsense.
And despite it being transparent garbage, millions of Americans are eagerly lapping up Red Scare 2.0
It was only true all the other times over the past 100 years, but not this time! Trust me, I'm an expert of all world secrets, but somehow no government has hired me to get my opinion! This is nothing like back in the 70s when leftists were causing 5 bombings every single day inside the US. Gosh, we're in the future now compared to then!
China might execute more people than the rest of the world combined, be interfering in the world at historic levels, building out its military with unprecedented speed and cooperating with cartels to gain control in South America while flooding the US with lethal drugs, but they don't count, because I make the rules!
Iran and communist billionaires might be funding leftist violence inside the US, but who cares, violence is legal protest, right?
The numerous successful and unsuccessful assassination attempts against conservatives don't count either, because assassination for political reasons isn't terrorism... probably? That's like, some other kind of thing!
And remember, if we caught it before it happened, it doesn't count cause I say so.
Related discussions:
US sanctions Italian hosting provider Autistici Inventati
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49451343
US Government designates host of noblogs.org a "global terrorist"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49464391
> Our financial strategy relies exclusively on voluntary donations.
That is not a sustainable strategy in the long term. Sure after this news they will get lots of donations, but long term it is not something that is realistic.
Since they are now "sanctioned" by the US you cannot legally donate to them even if you wanted to...*[0]
[0] *Unless you now know why this collective needs crypto more than ever.
>That is not a sustainable strategy in the long term
they've been around 25 years, which is nothing to sneeze at
> Since they are now "sanctioned" by the US you cannot legally donate to them even if you wanted to...*[0]
There are many of us who do not live in the US, so many still can. Just not through paypal.
Maybe they should try couping the Italian government, rename themselves to Ragazzi Orgogliosi. That should help.
Seems like a great organization
Streisand effect at work again
Yep I just donated $1000
Can I ask what you're hoping the organization does with that money? I'm genuinely interested in understanding what the expected outcome is.
Servers, connection and maintenance costs... That is what they do. Read the manifesto.
> We react by providing a platform and tools for digital self-defense addressing the need of free communication for activists and other individuals
Yes, they select the users. But clearly to exclude services to those they would judge as bad actors!
Ouch.
A good friend of mine was charged with providing material support to terrorists for providing similar donations. And all his donations were prior to the US designating the recipients as terrorists. The government's arguments were "Yes yes, but you knew what you were supporting even though we hadn't designated them as such..."
Hope you're not in the US.
Your friend has integrity and should hold their head up high they are fighting against oppressive bullshit
Naive world view. They also filed other less serious charges against him (of which he may have been guilty). He intended to plead "Not guilty", but after 2.5 years of him being held before trial[1], they offered him a deal. Plead guilty and get 5 years, including time served.
He likely would have beaten the terrorism charges, but for the lesser charges it wasn't clear that he'd get a better prison sentence than the one he was being offered.
He took the deal and pleaded guilty.
Also, lawyers cost money - perhaps he couldn't afford to keep fighting through a trial. I also have another friend who had the same charges leveled against him (not for donations, but volunteering services). He did fight the charges and got acquitted. I don't know if it's true, but I heard it cost him well over $1M for his legal defense.
[1] Trials like these take a long time to prepare for, by both parties.
Nice! That’s genuinely worth praise
https://cavallette.noblogs.org/2026/08/10076 - Direct link to the sanctions declaration.
The actual Treasury Announce here - https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sb0616/
"The Autistici Inventati is an Italy-based far-left organization that provides a range of technological tools and services to violent left-wing extremist groups, including website hosting on foreign servers, encrypted email accounts, chat and video conferencing, and digital architecture associated with its “Noblogs” platform. Autistici Inventati identifies itself as an “anti-fascist” and “anti-militarist” organization opposed to capitalism and exclusively provides its services to vetted individuals, collectives, and groups it perceives to be aligned with its ideology, including to sanctioned terrorist organizations such as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been designated by the United States, United Kingdom, and European Union for its use of terrorist tactics leading to thousands of deaths in Türkiye, Iraq, and Syria since its establishment in 1984.
Autistici Inventati is being designated pursuant to E.O. 13224, as amended, for having materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods and services to or in support of, an act of terrorism."
How quaint. The MEK (Iranian People's Mudjahheddin) were designated as a terrorist organization but collected money in EU streets all the time. Now they are useful against Khamenei.
The US would also like to use the equivalent of the PKK in the large Kurdish part of Iran against Khamenei.
Nothing to say of using the PKK rebranding of SDF in Syria as well as receiving "global terrorist" Al Jolani in the White House.
What does it entail, in practice?
They are sanctioned, okay, and? What happens practically.
They will become pariahs financially speaking. Nobody will be authorized to wire money to/from them. It's brutal.
> Nobody
In the USA - the consequences should be only related to USA pertinent actors. The newspapers in Italy say, "there is no judgement against them in Italy".
Anything between having their google profiles deleted to abducted and tortured at a CIA blacksite.
in this case, it mostly means trouble getting money, as they are funded via donations
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49479122
The consequences may include the loss of:
https://www.wewillfreeus.org/the-server-called-paranoia-defe...My question now is whether European hosting providers sprouting up in the face of the US CLOUD act will step up to provide those services.
No, because they don't want to be banned from banks. With few exceptions, the US has power over all global financial systems. Also tier 1 ISPs (even the European ones), which trickles down to all ISPs.
Do you think many banks worldwide would enjoy declaring themselves the enemies of the US government in order to assist left-wing lunatics?
The question stays the same: “are you antifa or are you fa?”