U.S. sanctions against the A/I Collective

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.

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.

It's a politico-technological arms race. Governments make laws, we make technology that gets around the laws. Governments must increase their tyranny just to maintain the same level of control they had before. The result is either an uncontrollable population, or a totalitarian state.

I always hoped we'd find some sort of equilibrium. A state where governments learn to tolerate some crime because fully policing them would require crossing serious lines. It's becoming increasingly clear though that governments have no limits. There is no cost they are unwilling to pay in the name of maintaining their own power.

This is hardly unprecedented -- in fact, it looks like the US government has learned a thing or two from the anti-spam community. If you actually want to block e-mail or newsgroup spam at its source, you don't complain to the spammer themselves, but rather to their mail/news provider, and if that doesn't work, you escalate the issue to the upstream provider, the hosting company for the spammer's website, the registrar for the spammer's domain names, and so on. This is time-consuming but is sometimes effective. (Of course, dedicated spammers may then switch providers, or start employing distributed botnets of zombified residential devices, but knocking out their infrastructure at least temporarily does disrupt their operations for a time and drives up their cost of business to the point where they may reduce or even cease their activity.)

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.

The picture everyone is missing is voting in November is how this gets resolved. The only way radical authoritarians survive on 30% approval ratings is apathy. Theres no reason to put up with this, the other side of a 70% electorate opposition is prison for the lawless incumbent

I believe there is a double standard here compared to section 230 of the communications act.

Platforms can't be held liable for speech on their platforms for a reason. For full disclosure: I feel ambivalent about that.

I don't know of an equivalent legal protection for I2P-like infrastructure.

I2P don't ideologically vet their users nor does Signal. A/I Collective does. That's kind of the pointe of all this.

It's just incredible how spiteful the federal government is towards its constituency

Isn't it just as likely they are using facebook, instagram, and tiktok?

In a much lighter but similar move, Suno is now associating exporting generated music with the behavior of "bad actors."

Signal is a honeypot

What sort of logic is this? I use I2P and no one sanctioned me or labeled me a terrorist.

I agree that ultimately they'll try to target Signal. Meredith (Whittaker) has a tough job on her hands. Much admiration.

Have we forgotten Megaupload? Napster? Limewire? BitTorrent?

Anyone setting up infrastructure has to consider, in the very least, how this will be used for CSAM in particular but sure, I guess terrorism too. Years ago we had The Office make a joke about this where the company website for selling paper was overtaken by child predators.

This is one reason why we have centralized infrastructure and not federated infrastructure. All the platforms we have have the capability to report content, automatically scan pictures, images and text and to respond to law enforcement. You need all of those processes.

They're not being targeted for terrorist activity per se; they're being targeted for providing material assistance to terrorists.

Per the Treasury Department:

"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." https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sb0616/

Per the State Department: "The A/I Collective provides encrypted tools and services to numerous violent far-left extremist groups operating in the United States and around the world. Many of these groups have relied on the A/I Collective’s digital infrastructure to plot or incite violent attacks, recruit others to engage in criminal activity, publish official communiqués by U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organizations, and disseminate maps of critical infrastructure, along with instructions for building improvised explosive and incendiary devices – all routed through a network of foreign servers intended to conceal criminal activity from law enforcement." They then go on to list the specifics. (https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/20...)

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> targeting of infrastructure providers as “terrorists” is unprecedented

It is not unprecedented though. The US military empire always was supported by the business empire and corruption empire. Trump and his BigBro Epstein party-goers just make it much more obvious. In reality the terrorists are in the US government primarily.

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.

Seems like this should be a/the top level link

>[The US State Dept's] examples include alleged railway and pipeline sabotage in Europe, attacks on energy infrastructure, Rose City Antifa, resistance to Atlanta’s proposed police-training center, Jane’s Revenge and publications carrying statements attributed to armed organizations.

At least one of these things is not like the others. Why are peaceful protests against "Cop City" (Atlanta's proposed police-training center) lumped in with violent attacks on infrastructure? This isn't the first time either - Samuel Tunick, the man who was charged with destruction of evidence for giving his duress pin to the CBP agents, was being investigated for his connection to the Cop City protests.[1]

And as others have said, what does it say about the current US admin that they are designating "anti-fascist" groups as terrorists? I will say, at least unlike Cop City protests afaik, Rose City Antifa seems willing to use violence to accomplish their goals.[2]

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/23/cop-city-pro...

[2]: https://rosecityantifa.org/articles/statment-on-strategy-and...

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.

The very first sentence on their about page says they "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"

It also says their manifesto was written in 2002.

You can use the Wayback machine to see older versions.

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/)

For what it's worth, the people I have known personally who talk like this don't actually do very much except talk like this. Then again, they have never been sanctioned by a government.

They host blogs and email used by many activists.

Maybe a honeypot?

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.

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.

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.

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"

Thank you! Kind of nuts they posted this with that title but no explanation.

It can't be because of a PKK link because then the US would have to designate themselves as terrorist. They literally armed and supplied to YPG to fight ISIS. The Kurds proved to be the most effective at stopping ISIS

So the argument is that it's a communication platform? With such "specifically designed" tools to enable "terrorist activity", such as "encrypted messaging" and other dual-use technologies such as: "a website", "an email".

With such strong proof as "A far-left extremist media group ... relies on A/I ... to publish official communiqués and calls to action for [various organizations]" This is what we in the business call a direct proof A/I materially supports Hezbollah terrorist actions. Clear direct link, simply because all alternate explanations are impossible. Everyone is happy that americans saved the day, again!

State Dept so in the clear that in this "This same group was recently cited in a federal criminal complaint against a domestic terrorist who was sentenced to 19 years in prison for targeting a federal building and police car with improvised explosive devices." they don't name the group nor the "terrorist" because if one would check, improvised explosive device would turn out to be a molotov.

So Casey Goonan throws molotov at a police car -> Abolition Media (the unnamed group) publishes some claims about the attack -> A/I, a comm platform provider on another continent now suddenly provides "material support for violent extremism" in the US, just because Abolition Media used its blog infra. Cool story. Despite both links being tenous at best.

And such it will be with lot of other claims in there, given that US is led by absolute clauns and psychos currently.

In times like these...

Interesting to see that their most important domain, noblogs dot org, seems unaffected.

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Same. I wonder if there's something I don't understand here? But afaict it doesn't seem to involve autistic people in particular?

> (If you're opposed to antifascists what does that make you?)

Smart enough to reject abusive little word games?

I see "fascism" and "antifascism" more like "matter" and "antimatter" - pretty much the same thing, just there's a violent reaction when the two collide.

> (If you're opposed to antifascists what does that make you?

You cant judge a group by its name. Otherwise, Make America Great Again is great, the National Socialist German Workers' party seems fine, etc.

Exactly. Antifa is short for "opposed to fascism". Which, you know, is the bad thing where you hurt a lot of people just because they are different from the "group" you defined, with the aim of spoliating the outsiders to enrich the members, or make them an inferior cast, etc...

Having to explain why fascism is to be fought against...

Ugh, what a world. Not even science-fiction writers dared to write such a nonsensical reality.

> when no such central organization insists

No any such organization exists. It is a movement, and a description one can describe one's self or actions: "anti-fascist".

But of course, their logic for sanctioning-by-association would mean that they all - Trump, Bessent, Rubio etc. - with their innumerable contacts with "violent terrorist groups and regimes" everywhere around the world, and just themselves really - should have been sanctioned, arrested, tried, or just disposed of like the US does with so many it dislikes.

> (If you're opposed to antifascists what does that make you?)

Communist parties around the world killed 80+ million civilians, and were also vehemently anti-fascist, will opposing that make you fascist?

The first amendment only applies inside the US. The US is allowed to cancel the speech of foreigners.

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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?

Their infrastructure and services were used in domestic terrorist attacks on pregnancy centers in the United States, by the CHAZ operation in which two black teenagers were lynched, attempts to crash police helicopters, attempts to burn police officers alive.

Providing material support to perpetrators of these actions would go above "speech".

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.

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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.

US sanctions mean if you trade with the santioned org.. YOU get sanctioned (lose access to trade or financial systems controlled by US or US companies like Visa)

They will become pariahs financially speaking. Nobody will be authorized to wire money to/from them. It's brutal.

If you donate to them from the US, you probably get put on a no-fly list at a minimum. Maybe even a friendly visit from the feds at your home!

Anything between having their google profiles deleted to abducted and tortured at a CIA blacksite.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49479122

The consequences may include the loss of:

  • 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.

https://www.wewillfreeus.org/the-server-called-paranoia-defe...

*˙ᴉuᴉlossnW oʇᴉuǝq - uoᴉʇɔɐǝɹ sᴉ ɯsᴉɔsɐℲ

Anti-fascism is reaction to fascism, it's in the name, even.

Clueless.

In my experience, groups like this have a fairly hostile relationship to State Communism as well. The Kronstadt rebellion for example is frequently cited [1]. But then you have groupings like Anarchist communists [2], which you would then risk lumping together with the anti-Communism part (not to mention that anti-Communism as a term is usually associated with forces staunchly opposed to people like this). Plus, if you are "only" anti-authoritarian, how do you suggest avoiding getting lumped together with Anarcho-capitalism?

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kronstadt_rebellion

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist_communism

Furthermore, these organisations operate in what they perceive to be Fascist and/or Capitalist societies, so why state opposition to something that is not "there" and has been pretty much gone from the global scene for nearly forty years?

In conclusion, yes, you have a point. But given the reasons above I find it really hard to get worked up over it and Anarchists do not generally get along with Leninists, Stalinists, or Maoists anyway.

Of fascism, capitalism, and communism, only two are going concerns in these people's lives. If they're going to declare themselves "anti-communist" they might as well also take a strong vocal stance against ghosts and flying cars.

Yep I just donated $1000

This is getting too big to ignore and is leaking into mainstream popular culture.

In the most popular streaming show atm (new season of Reacher), a main plot point is CIA and State Department and Green Berets involvement in a village massacre in Indonesia in the 90s (in the land of the tv show), this is of course a reference to the CIA and State Department indirectly murdering 1 million Indonesians 1965-1966.

> US has done worse

They have not.

Which of Trump or Putin is worse is irrelevant. Trump's US is maybe on par with Putin's Russia, maybe better or maybe worse (which depends on which aspect is looked at). That cannot deter us from fighting against what is bad in both of them.

This is NOT a competition nor a championship about which dictatorship can inflict the most pain and destruction to the world.

Nobody is rooting for such a "winner".

Criticize all the despicable actions of such stinky regimes, regardless of if they are in Putin's Russia, in Trump's US, or wherever else.

We are NOT in a race to the bottom.

We shall never forget our values, as Humans and as Earth-dwellers.

the asymmetric deployment of "whataboutism!" is hypocrisy about hypocrisy

the first few sentences of this link, and their about page, and their services page all make it clear what they do. i am unsure of where you confusion comes from.

They host blogs and digital infrastructure for autonomous anarchist/leftist collectives and are deeply connected to global free speech movements since their founding in 2001. If you expect to see a two sentence mission statement or a product summary, you’re going to be disappointed.

They aren't?

They are very clearly providing IT support for free to anti fascist organizations.

Do you see how a removal from a private app store, while bad, is different from an arrest or a sanction?

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...

Do you regularly laugh at poor people?

Laugh in what way?

In the United States, your example is explicitly protected by the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. It is the legal defense of arms manufacturers who's product is sold legally and in good faith but is used by a third-party for illegal actions.

Rather than a vague insinuation that this group has taken some action deserving of economic blackballing, perhaps you could point to some specific action this group has done?

Sure you can. Gun makers do it all the time!

Which terrorist groups, specifically? And what support are they offering specifically?

You say provide tools for communication. Presumably that's every communication platform worldwide - almost undoubtably some sort of terrorist has used each of them.

>They are making and providing tools that enable communication specifically for Far Left groups, some of which are terrorist groups.

As per a government who puts cycling and expressing distaste for inflation in the same camp.

> So I don't think this is as innocent as they seem.

Well, they are innocent until proven guilty.

> They are making and providing tools that enable communication specifically for Far Left groups, some of which are terrorist groups.

By all means, present something that shows they are knowingly supporting terrorist groups so we might judge for ourselves.

I mean, we have organizations that supported the January 6th terrorists that haven't had anything done to them, so I'm looking for something more serious than murder, storming the capital, riots, attacking the police force, and attempted assassination of a Vice President.

Without judging this or trying to axiomatically derive the logic, I think the claim here is that a/I knowingly and deliberately provides services to the PKK, which the US and the EU designate as a terrorist organization.

>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.

Look up Operation Gladio

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