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?
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.
The 24 pilot was filmed before 9/11. After 9/11, the show had to be modified because reality has become uncomfortably close to it. That included delaying the premiere and removing a scene involving an exploding passenger aircraft.
The Washington Post reported on a trend of shows about counter-terrorism and spies, on August 4 2011: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/2001/08/04/...
That article mentions that some of those shows relied on government consultation, with the CUA and FBI, to help with realism, etc. “24” was not one of them. “24” co-creator Joel Surnow is on record saying there was no government involvement.
Quote from the WP for context:
> Coming this fall [2001]: A new primetime drama series takes a close-up look at an elite federal agency and the dedicated men and women who hunt deadly terrorists and treacherous criminals.
> The new show's on CBS. It's also on NBC. And ABC. And Fox. Some years it's twenty-something sitcoms. Sometimes it's doctors, or vermin-oriented "reality" shows. This fall, the trend is Fed TV: No fewer than five new network series depict the exploits of people with civil-service pay grades, shiny employee ID badges and very large guns.
But it was “24” that did the most to normalize the “torture the bad guys till they reveal the plot” and other such right-wing wet dreams.
I can't find much left or right coverage of it, there's so much news coverage in the way.
That said:
> Canada debanked right wing truckers
Who were participating in the illegal blockade: https://www.canadianlawyermag.com/news/general/fca-upholds-2...
The government also exceeded their authority, but there's a gap between "I don't like (left/right)" and "blockade".
> multiple American platforms coordinated to silence Trump in 2021
After this happened and he was impeached twice for his performance regarding it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Capitol_riot-_Videos_show...
(No comment on BBC link save for this not being novel by UK standards nor specific to left/right: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_joke_trial)
8chan didn't even do shit
That makes them, like, the bad guys, don't you think?!
All this means eg. Signal would not be able to escape jurisdictions, because no bank anywhere relevant will endanger their SWIFT access opposing the US. Sanctioned Signal would stop providing services for everyone, since they can't pay for servers, neither being able to receive donations, nor wire any money themselves. It's similar prior situations involving payment processors (e.g. in case of Wikileaks), but has totalitarian reach affecting almost all banking globally.
You can maintain much better opsec in a two way communication than a broadcast.
Since the US considers anything "antifa" as terrorism now, it already had most concerning distant effects last year. See GLS bank cancelling Rote Hilfe in Germany. 1933 was the last time Rote Hilfe was cancelled, btw. It's an antifa OG. Pretty good indicator about the status quo..
Anyway, look at e.g. GrapheneOS, which is already treated as probable cause by law enforcement. Encrypted messaging also super sus. Thing is, funding can't escape jurisdictions. Signal servers are not running on love and fellowship, but donations and public money. Opsec won't protect your software stack's foundation against US finance attacks.
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.
* I did not make the designation, I know nothing about the PKK, I am only referencing it.
But I'm curious about your take on this. How would you argue the first amendment protects this?
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.
No moral ground to stand on? Would you say that about Amazon who supports the US regime, which is in the business of bombing Iranian schoolgirls? Is that less terrorist?
This collective of course has much more of a moral ground to stand on than indeed Amazon.
Strictly speaking, unintended collateral damage of civilians in a war does not fulfill the definition of terrorism. The attack on Iranian school was to the best of my knowledge a mistake stemming from old intel. Terrorism is deliberate attack on civilians to achieve a political goal.
If you're going to go down the semantics route, every word needs proper inspection. You're focusing on only one of them, "terrorism".
Luckily though, we don't need to; the US does more than enough intentional extrajudicial executions of civilians on its own. Even just considering one particular area where it does them, and then only the ones we know about, we're at about 227 civilian executions in just the last few years [0].
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/10/29/us/us-caribbe...
Bloomberg piece on this topic:
>An Analyst’s Missed Remark Surfaced in Deadly Iran School Strike Probe
>An analyst's missed remarks and US intelligence systems that weren’t connected to one another are among the missteps that investigators have surfaced while probing the cause of a missile strike on an Iranian school that killed an estimated 120 children, people familiar with the matter said.
>Years before the US attacked Iran at the end of February, an intelligence analyst examining information about potential future strike targets in Iran noticed changes at a site the US had previously characterized as a naval facility belonging to the elite wing of the Iranian military in Minab city in the southeast of the country. It was, in fact, now an elementary school.
>The analyst remarked on changes at the site in a digital intelligence tool, but that tool wasn’t linked up to the official intelligence database that the US uses to develop strike targets and the information was never conveyed to military commanders, according to people familiar with the matter who declined to be named discussing sensitive matters.
I love how governments (in the west) are absolutely incapable of campaigns of terror.
I think that when you’re bombing thousands of targets, a 0.1-1% targeting error rate leads to dozens of unintended collateral hits (and thousands of civilians dead) — and is among the many reasons wars are horrific.
A mistake in a completely unjust war.
And what about the fishing boats we are bombing in the Caribbean and the Pacific? Not even the pretense of a legitimate war in that situation.
careful, if you start going after neutral infrastructure providers, that means google, amazon, microsoft, meta, and more will also need to go. i guarantee more terrorism-related content is discussed via those providers than a/i.
we should probably also go after internet service providers, too. maybe the companies that make the fiber optics?
(has anyone checked who is providing terrorists with electricity?)
going after neutral service providers, like google, is dumb. just like going after the electrical company would be dumb.
>careful, if you start going after neutral infrastructure providers, that means google, amazon, microsoft, meta, and more will also need to go.
No, because they actively respond to removal request. Open by default, supporting request for removal.
The difference comes in when you are open by default and tell the US to fuck off when they ask you to stop supporting terror groups.
i am replying specifically to your comments about neutral providers (that's why i quoted the part of your comment that i did)
>No, because they actively respond to removal request.
there is still orders of magnitude more conversations going through the providers i mentioned, related to terrorism/csam/etc., which is simply not reported or not known. right now, meta is facilitating significantly more terrorism than a/i.
in any case, this isn't really about terrorism. they've just overused the child-safety angle lately, and needed to drum up some anti-privacy/anti-encryption using the terrorism card.
sure. whatsapp is used by literal billions of people. add in a few more billion people through facebook, instagram, gmail, outlook, amazon.
would you like me to walk through the statistics calculations? or can you extrapolate from the billions of users? now make a guess how many people a/i has facilitated. a few thousand? a hundred thousand?
>Even if that were true how would that change anything? They still comply with the US government and their mission statement isn't to empower, protect, support political extremists.
because it demonstrates that the goal is not to curtail terrorism.
yes
lets start with this: how many terrorists do you think a/i has helped?
emphasis mine. my assertion is that whatsapp, a neutral provider, facilitates more terrorists than a/i. i.e., the US should consider sanctioning them, if we are to follow nonethewiser's recommendation.
(to be clear, i'm on the pro-privacy, pro-encryption side, and don't actually think the US should be sanctioning whatsapp)
But the analysis isn't based on "which service enables more terrorists". By that logic, forget WhatsApp, forget Signal; Google Mail probably runs the table in absolute numbers. But all three of those services assist terrorists without any deliberation or really even actual knowledge on the part of the providers.
The claim is that A/I can't say the same thing.
>without any deliberation or really even actual knowledge on the part of the providers.
i think we agree that this is an implicit requirement of being considered a neutral provider.
so, to claim neutral providers should be subject to sanctions implies that a provider who does not know or purposefully facilitate terrorists should still be subject to sanctions (gmail, whatsapp, signal, amazon, etc.)
then we got sidetracked by me being asked how can i possibly know that meta/google/etc. facilitate more terrorists than a/i. which i, and seemingly you, agree is a pretty obvious answer given the scale of the organizations. and i was asked to "walk them through that".
Or for that matter, where they get their air?! Oh gosh golly darn, gee, if Earth is providing air to those commie bastards…
I may not agree with their political views, but to say that the tool is the problem is equivalent to saying guns kill people instead of people that use guns. The problem isn’t the tool or their point of view, or then even speaking about it - the problem comes from humans not controlling themselves. Any actor taking any adverse or malicious action inspired by words or ideas isn’t the fault of the ideator or author, but of the actor failing in self control.
Gotta reign this insanity in.
the double-negative might be confusing, so we can reword it to: "And even if they were neutral, the US should sanction them for supporting terrorism"
that's the part i quoted and my comment is about.
Did they? There's a lot of implication with that "if", and I saw someone else point out (albeit rudely) that anything that may have supported them was taken down.
Or since ONU has declared illegal the occupation of territory in West Bank, will US sanction Israel?
Or will the United States only sanction those who simply see things differently from them?
you might ask who is right; the groups like google providing services to the us military, or the groups providing services to those opposing the us military.
Woah, with radical statements like that, we might have to go after mutual aid groups, PACs, and churches.
We'll see if the Bush- and Obama-style thoughtcrime back in action will lull USA citizens and make them forget the gas price.
[0] https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/4a3850cc-9186...
But they are not choosing to support the PKK.
They accuse it of being “a major far-left tech collective whose services are used by the most active and violent Antifa cells in the United States and across the world.”
The far left is a terrorist group? Where are all these violent "antifa cells"?
They labeled this groups as a terrorist organization so they could claim that anyone protesting the fascist Trump regime will easily be labeled terrorists and thrown in jail without a trial.
"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."
Email, chat, websites, blogs - these are all speech! A/I's overt political statement (that you are indicting them for) points to their primary interest being to facilitate political speech - a type of speech with some of the strongest protections (that whole "assemble ... and petition the Government" thing)
Beyond that, they're presumably a neutral conduit like every other service provider. If some users of their services are communicating to coordinate crimes, then unless A/I is getting directly involved in those conversations (with the government producing hard evidence of this), it's the exact same dynamic as every other email/hosting provider.
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.
That's why the US Constitution Americans know is a few pages long, while the one actual US judges, lawyers etc. use is a massive 3,000 pages long volume. That's what it takes to rhetorically weasel oneself away from most of what those few initial pages do say.
From a normative what ought perspective, a rationalization from an institution that has been slowly chipping away at our Constitutional rights is not particularly compelling. "Bad facts make bad law" is a saying for a reason. You're certainly not the first to casually disregard the freedom of speech!
So make no mistake, this action here is still fundamentally about speech - regardless of the routine legal hack of focusing on the concrete embodiment of said speech to sidestep a restriction on policing the speech itself. A/I is providing a platform for speech to these other groups, which seems eminently reasonable to me. Accepting the government's arguments here would imply accepting that it's also illegal to read what a terrorist group has written, as you would be giving them "material support" by helping their writings reach you by transiting your network and processing them with your computing device.
Which is why I said "weak men create hard times". It is difficult work to look at people you disagree with and acknowledge they too have rights, especially in the face of the powerful pushing rationalizations otherwise. But it's necessary work, lest the next time political winds shift you find yourself staring down the business ends of same exact pointy sticks that you had been cheering on.
[1] https://www.wewillfreeus.org/the-server-called-paranoia-defe...
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...
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.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/desi...
Is there a way to not exist within capitalism and fascism while opposing it? You speak about it like this is some hypocrisy on their part. Is it not the rhetorical equivalent of "oh, you're drowning?? but you're IN WATER.."?
> Maybe not violently, but hardly can one expect sympathies, especially from system itself.
I would never expect the law to be sympathetic to anyone. I want the law to be fairly written, and equally applied. But unfortunately we're living in a time when you can get a life sentence for photocopying an anti-ice zine.
I laughed so hard at that. Best argument is good argument but funny.
Now since "potential" is not a crime, list the acts that merit the label.
And surely those swastika carriers are getting similar sentences... right?
Storm the capital to overthrow an election, get a pardon. Photocopy an anti-ice zine, get life in prison. Makes sense.
xienze said that an organization which defines itself as antifascist COULD be extreme.
You're asking for a definition of terrorism so you can say that A/I is not a terrorist organization. But that's not what's being argued.
xienze is saying that antifascists CAN be terrorist, not that all of them are. For example, the Red Army Faction committed numerous terrorists acts: bombings, kidnappings, murders. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_Faction#Criminal_acts
OKRainbowKid, of course, started from a false premise that "antifascists" are being persecuted because they're against "fascism".
Could have been a false flag to discredit antifa. What happened to safe harbor?
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.
What is this?
> 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/)
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.
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.
> 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.
It provides email accounts, mailing lists, blogs, websites, chat and VPN access.
And the platform hasn't done any killing. They merely provide email etc. Are we going to sanction road builders too because a murderer has driven on their road since 1984?
Meanwhile the SDF, the armed wing of the PYD, follows the same ideology as the PKK and was trained in military tactics by the PKK, and was among our chief allies against ISIS. They fought alongside US soldiers and we even supplied them with small arms.
The history of the PKK is complicated and the state they struggle against has a long history of genocide and (more recently) outright dictatorship. The relation of these countries to the PKK isn't ultimately determined by the PKK's history, morality, ideology, or even the use of terrorist tactics per se.
If you're curious about the bigger picture, there's actually an organized movement whose aim is to "de-list the PKK" as a terrorist organization, and that's probably a good place to start: https://www.peaceinkurdistancampaign.com/activities/delist-t...
There are also some books and some academic papers on the history of the PKK and their ideology. Those written by independent academics are generally neither fully condemnatory nor exculpatory towards the PKK, but give a clear sense of how the term "terrorism" and its use is at least contestable, geopolitical, etc. And any familiarity at all with the history of the conflict makes it clear that the Turkish government is likewise guilty of state terror conducted against Kurdish civilian populations in Turkey for generations now.
https://www.israelhayom.com/2025/11/12/donald-trump-ahmed-al...
"Al-Sharaa, who until recently was known by his alias "al-Julani," was a longtime jihadist who was part of the ranks of organizations associated with al-Qaida and ISIS, and even orchestrated an attack against Israel – milestones that led to his designation as a "Specially Designated Global Terrorist" by the US, with a reward of approximately $10 million for information leading to his capture. President Trump decided to lift the sanctions on al-Sharaa, who has transformed into a political leader following the collapse of the Assad regime in December, when he assumed Syria's presidency as the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham."
You should never take the "terrorist" label at face value.
The US funded the Mujaheddin in the 80s in Afghanistan. Their first moves upon receiving the weapons was to throw grenades through the windows if Girls' schools.
They began as the "useful lackey", and the US lost control of the Wahabist movement that was amplified to fight Communism. Then they were "freedom fighters" to the religious extremists, and "terrorists" to fight a war against.
In your own example, Al-Sharaa(a product of weaponizing Wahhabism) did actual terrorism, and then was able to squeeze back into the "useful lackey" position, like many "terrorist"s have before him.
I see people posting links to x.com which he uses to promote those views as well as platform other hate groups calling for violence and genocide against immigrants, trans people, etc.
Do acts gain moral validity under color of law alone?
You see it everywhere.
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.
> 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
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"
The US regime is an extremely violent group, so I that's certainly the issue.
If you are on the side of the above and against the US... the US is going to seek you down and stop you.
I don't understand why that's surprising. It's like when the Weather Underground took an oath to destroy the US and was surprised when the FBI started following them around.. you declared yourself an enemy.
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.
> This is simply armed conflict.
Armed conflict by residents and citizens against the state is usually a serious criminal offense everywhere.
Terrorism is widely understood to be the deployment of military force against civilian populations. Of course states do this all the time, but 'state terrorism' is basically dependent on whether politicians in country A align with country B or not; if they don't, they'll call out state abuses in country B as state terrorism, if not they'll say it's law and order.
Regardless of these nuances, extending the definition to include any kind of property damage is just laughably opportunist.
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.
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.
Is it not "legitimate" in the same way to kill terrorists?
That pretty much tells you everything you need to know. Definitions of "terrorism" that extend to sabotage against occupying or invading militaries and their allies are meaningless and hollow dilutions. At that point the discourse has been reduced to something like "violence is scary".
This use is also interesting (and galling) because it frames disarming as an unacceptably violent act.
There are some definitions of terrorism that leave room to designate attacks against professional agents of state violence as "terror", e.g., attacks on soldiers who are off-duty, attacks on civilian police forces, attacks on nominally civilian intelligence organizations like the CIA, etc.
Imo such uses of the words "terror" and "terrorism" should be considered carefully, because sometimes they are meaningful or useful, but often they are essentially attempts to hoodwink the public. Effectively they are designed so that any attack against an occupying army by a faction too weak to muster a permanent standing army of equal strength falls into the "terrorism" category, which means invasion is "war" but resistance is "terrorism".
The notion of "civilian" or "non-combatant" isn't always straightforward, either. In the history of the PKK, for example, one of the "civilian" forces targeted by bombings and shootings were a local militia whose sole purpose was suppressing popular unrest among local Kurdish populations who were forbidden from speaking their own native languages, celebrating their holidays, etc. Formally these militias were not part of an army. But their scarcely concealed function was suppression of the local population, unlike (for example) a proper civilian police force whose role is at least nominally to promote public safety, assist vulnerable (weak, elderly, disabled) citizens with daily life, investigate crimes, mediate/de-escalate disputes, etc.
Anyway, it's worth sitting down and thinking through a few different serious definitions of terrorism and asking yourself what use they are. One or more definitions will likely stand out to you as particularly useful when it comes to thinking through things like the safety of innocents, the morality and bounds of acceptable political activism, and other topics that might directly affect your comfort and safety. You'll often find that governments and large press organizations try to trade on the emotional impact of those definitions while operating under rather different ones that are more convenient for themselves.
Can we all agree that this is an assault on the First Amendment?
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/desi...
Title: A Statement by A/I Collective About US Sanctions
(If you're opposed to antifascists what does that make you?)
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.
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.
"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.
This is, to be clear, lying nonsense.
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.
Adjusting for Purchasing Parity, an imperfect measure, that still only like 600 billion, significantly lower than the United States.
The politics of billionaires as a group is not leftism, nor is it rightism. The politics of billionaires is self-serving authoritarianism. From each camp, they pick the sides of issues that stand to increase their own power, taking stakes in them as if they are horses. They will gladly support woke groupthink as long as it's getting results, and then readily switch to supporting anti-woke groupthink when society has had enough and the winds shift.
The net effects from both phases are losses from our individual liberty, which have been accumulating for decades, and are presumably the source of your rightful anger. But please come to your senses!
* https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sb0616/
* https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/20...
And - the list of people that were originally put in this category when G.W. Bush issued this executive order has 29 people/organizations: Usama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al Qaida, and various affiliated/related organizations.
So, yesterday it was Bin-Laden, today it is some Italian left-wing tech guys, and tomorrow it might well be you or me. Get ready to be branded a terrorist at some point.
Streisand effect at work again
> 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!
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.
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.
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.
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 sanctions Italian hosting provider Autistici Inventati
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49451343
US Government designates host of noblogs.org a "global terrorist"
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."
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.
MEK is probably just 300 really old guys now, they have strict rules against marrying outside the org.
[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.
> Off topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.
So you’re incorrect. HN isn’t off bounds for all political posts, but yes, they do have to have an “interesting new phenomenon”.
The U.S. sanctioning a decades old technology collective is clearly new. Whether it’s “interesting” I can’t speak to because that’s subjective to every individual, but that’s where the useful voting system comes in.
Have you ever opened the website of any B2B software/services provider? By your logic, they're all the most suspicious people on earth, because none of them seem to be able to explain what they actually do.
You're getting a negative response because ignoring that and implying that they're secretly doing sketchy things makes it look like you're doing bad faith criticism
They are very clearly providing IT support for free to anti fascist organizations.
"HN cheering", true or not, doesn't really matter in the end, either.
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.
Can you see how it's different from an explicit sanction or an arrest?
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?
You say provide tools for communication. Presumably that's every communication platform worldwide - almost undoubtably some sort of terrorist has used each of them.
As per a government who puts cycling and expressing distaste for inflation in the same camp.
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.
I think that second (speculative, of course) step would be the more worrying precedent: if the use of technical infrastructure also used by designated groups was formally made to be incriminating/right-waiving. Why wouldn’t that apply to Signal, for example? The OP suggests the dividing line should be between true infrastructure open to all, including unsavory actors, versus tools that advertise services to a particular faction. It’s not an entirely disagreeable distinction, but I think in practice it’s rather fuzzy (Moxie of signal is/was rather far left himself, if I recall).
EDIT: Re-reading the document, the state department emphasizes that a/I “manually vets all potential users.” OP’s distinction stands for now.
Signal doesn't knowingly and deliberately provide services to any organization, let alone one formally designated by the US and the EU. The whole point of Signal is to eliminate all pretenses of the service knowing who its users are or what they're doing. To the extent that's also true of Autistici Inventati, the OFAC designation is invalid.
[0] https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/20...
They are sanctioned, okay, and? What happens practically.
• 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.
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.
they've been around 25 years, which is nothing to sneeze at
There are many of us who do not live in the US, so many still can. Just not through paypal.