<nettime> US State Department blocks autistici.org

[Geert Lovink via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

Autistici/Inventati the Italian activist server/mail provider with servers in NL, has been added to the terrorist list by the US yesterday. Last night, American authorities removed their domain name from ICANN, the internet organisation that manages the .org domains in the world (an organization that is quasi-neutral but US based and in the hands of Trump authorities). The server, www.autistici.org <http://www.autistici.org/>, is now blocked. You can still read more information about it here: https://www.inventati.org/. 

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From: https://www.wewillfreeus.org/the-server-called-paranoia-defend-autistici-inventati-before-september-25/ 

On August 26, the U.S. State Department designated Autistici/Inventati a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (see statement below). At the same time, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control placed A/I on the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons list under Executive Order 13224. This is not simply a condemnatory government statement. It activates one of the world’s most powerful systems of economic exclusion. 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.

Treasury’s public announcement focuses upon the services A/I provides: foreign-hosted websites, encrypted email, chat, video conferencing and the digital architecture supporting Noblogs. It describes A/I’s antifascist and antimilitarist politics, its practice of selecting projects compatible with those politics and its provision of infrastructure used by the PKK. Treasury then treats the provision of that infrastructure as material or technological support for terrorism. (U.S. Treasury announcement <https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sb0616/?ref=wewillfreeus.org>) The State Department’s accompanying case goes further, presenting attacks, communiqués and publications that it says passed through A/I infrastructure. Its 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. (State Department designation <https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/2026/08/designation-of-autistici-inventati-as-a-specially-designated-global-terrorist/?ref=wewillfreeus.org>) The government’s public statements do not show that A/I planned those actions, selected targets, transferred weapons, directed the cited groups or authored the material hosted on its systems. They do not establish when A/I learned of any particular act or whether it knew about it before it occurred.

Instead, the designation advances a broader and more consequential proposition:

Building communications infrastructure for radical movements can itself be treated as terrorism.

That theory collapses the distinction between a provider and a user; between political affinity and operational control; between protecting privacy and concealing a crime; between maintaining a publishing platform and authoring everything published through it. A/I has never claimed to be politically neutral. It built infrastructure precisely because radical movements needed somewhere to speak, publish and organize beyond corporate and state control. The United States is now using that purpose as evidence against it.

What happens on September 25

Because A/I is now on the SDN list, all of its property or interests in property within the United States—or possessed or controlled by a U.S. person—must be blocked and reported to OFAC. Unless an exemption or license applies, U.S. people and institutions are generally prohibited from providing or receiving funds, goods or services involving A/I. The restrictions can reach transactions passing through the United States even when the parties are located elsewhere. OFAC has issued a temporary license allowing transactions ordinarily necessary to wind down existing relationships with A/I until 12:01 a.m. Eastern time on September 25, 2026. Payments owed to the collective cannot simply be released to it; they must be placed in blocked accounts. After the deadline, covered transactions require another applicable authorization. September 25 is therefore the date by which American companies and individuals are expected to separate themselves from A/I.

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.
Foreign companies are not automatically governed by every prohibition imposed upon Americans. But OFAC warns that foreign financial institutions can face secondary-sanctions exposure for knowingly facilitating significant transactions on behalf of a designated entity. That warning may do as much damage as direct enforcement. A European bank, registrar or hosting company may not know precisely what American law demands of it. Its compliance department may simply decide that maintaining a relationship with a small Italian anarchist collective is not worth the perceived risk. Institutions frequently over-comply. Providers may close accounts or withdraw infrastructure even when the law does not clearly require them to do so. Organizations may remove links, avoid correspondence or terminate unrelated relationships merely because A/I’s name now appears on a terrorism blacklist.

That is how American sanctions acquire worldwide force: not only through legal jurisdiction, but through institutional fear.

The wider target is the community around the server

The designation may be directed at A/I, but its effects will not stop at the collective. A/I’s infrastructure is used by writers, organizers, researchers, artists, movement publications and people who chose it precisely because commercial platforms were unsafe, politically hostile or designed to extract their data. Those users are not automatically sanctioned because they have an A/I address or published on Noblogs. But once the provider itself is placed on a terrorism blacklist, ordinary association can be converted into a risk signal. A bank may scrutinize a payment. An email provider may downgrade or block delivery. An employer, border agent or investigator may treat an address as suspicious. A journalist may hesitate to contact a source. A researcher may avoid an archive. A new user may decide that opening an account is too dangerous. None of this requires the government to prosecute every person involved. The designation can produce its own perimeter of fear.

That is one reason this otherwise inexplicable move may be useful to the state even if A/I remains online. Earlier attacks tried to reach the collective through particular machines, mailboxes and providers. A/I answered by distributing its systems, encrypting its disks and retaining less information. Those practices made conventional seizure and surveillance less productive. Sanctions attack a different layer: the relationships that allow infrastructure to exist. Rather than breaking the encryption, the government can pressure banks, registrars, data centers, software companies and users to isolate the people operating it. Rather than prove in court that each user committed an offense, it can make continued contact costly and legally uncertain.

This is surveillance-state power operating through private intermediaries. The government does not need to place an officer inside every server room when compliance departments, payment processors and platforms can be induced to police the network themselves. Each institution will draw its own defensive boundary, often wider than the law requires. Some may demand more identity documents, retain more logs, monitor political content or refuse privacy-preserving projects altogether. Others may quietly close accounts and provide no meaningful avenue of appeal. Enforcement becomes dispersed across companies whose decisions are difficult to see, challenge or even document.

The resulting harm is not limited to censorship. It can change the architecture of movement communication. Small autonomous providers may conclude that serving controversial communities invites existential risk. Larger platforms may point to the designation as another reason to expand identity verification, automated moderation and data retention. Users may migrate from trusted movement infrastructure to commercial systems that are easier to monitor, subpoena and map. The state gains leverage even when it gains no plaintext from A/I’s encrypted disks: people separate themselves, providers collect more information and the social relationships surrounding dissent become easier to observe.

The precedent also reaches beyond explicitly anarchist or antifascist projects. If political alignment with users, privacy protections and the hosting of controversial publications can be assembled into a case that infrastructure itself constitutes support, then encrypted mail providers, radical publishers, community archives, VPNs, federated social networks, legal-support projects and other independent hosts all have reason to pay attention. The immediate facts and laws would differ in every case. The danger lies in normalizing the category: a communications provider no longer treated as a conduit or publisher with its own rights and responsibilities, but as a participant in every act the government attributes to anyone using its systems.

That does not mean the designation is secretly about every A/I user, or that every possible consequence will occur. The government has not publicly explained its internal strategy beyond the allegations in its announcements. But the structure of the action is visible. It replaces a narrow accusation against identifiable conduct with a broad penalty against infrastructure; shifts enforcement from a courtroom to a global web of cautious institutions; and makes uncertainty itself an instrument of control. The immediate objective may be to disable A/I. The wider effect is to warn anyone building communications beyond corporate and state supervision that the shelter they provide can be recast as evidence against them.

Can A/I survive this?

A/I has seen state repression coming for miles.

Its entire infrastructure assumes that:

Servers will be seized.
Providers will cooperate with police.
Governments will demand information about users.
Corporations will disconnect controversial material.
Individual machines and locations will become unavailable.
Data and services must therefore be encrypted, distributed and replaceable.
That preparation matters. A/I is based in Italy, not the United States. Its infrastructure is internationally distributed. Its services are maintained by technically sophisticated volunteers. It avoids dependence on any single provider, minimizes identifying information and has decades of experience restoring services during emergencies. It has no shareholders, corporate headquarters or conventional payroll. Its relatively modest operating costs and volunteer structure give the state fewer familiar pressure points. There is little reason to assume that the website, mail system or Noblogs will simply disappear on September 25. A/I may be better equipped to survive a seized or disconnected machine than nearly any communications project of comparable size.

But this is not another server raid.

Plan R* was built to survive machines disappearing. It cannot, by itself, prevent banks from blocking money, registrars from suspending domains or companies around the world from withdrawing services because they fear American penalties.

The designation targets the connective tissue around the servers:

Banking.
Donations.
Domains.
Data-center contracts.
Bandwidth.
Certificates.
Software dependencies.
International institutional relationships.
A/I has survived technical isolation before. The United States is now attempting financial and institutional excommunication. Its core services may be resilient. Its ability to fund them, replace infrastructure and participate in the broader technological system is at considerably greater risk. What happens after September 25 will therefore depend not only upon the architecture surrounding A/I’s data, but upon the solidarity surrounding A/I itself.

September 25 is not a deadline for silence

The designation is designed to isolate. The answer must be informed, independent and disciplined solidarity. People in the United States should not improvise donations, disguise payments or route resources through another person, organization, currency or country. That could create sanctions exposure for the supporter, the intermediary and A/I itself. The prohibitions can also extend beyond money. Coordinated technical assistance, translation, advocacy, event organization or other services provided to a designated entity may create legal risk.

But September 25 is not a deadline for silence. Independent reporting, criticism, protest, education and political advocacy remain possible. People can tell A/I’s history, examine and challenge the government’s claims, contact journalists and civil-liberties organizations, preserve public materials and independently organize against the criminalization of resistant communications infrastructure. The practical distinction is between speaking and acting independently about A/I and providing funds or coordinated services to A/I. The exact boundaries can be complicated. Anyone contemplating fundraising, replacement infrastructure, public mirroring or direct technical assistance should obtain qualified sanctions counsel. A February 2025 civil-liberties primer on material support and OFAC restrictions <https://static1.squarespace.com/static/548748b1e4b083fc03ebf70e/t/67be35d745142c70ddc7430f/1740518871622/MST%2Bresource_edit-2.pdf?ref=wewillfreeus.org>also warns that lawful or protected activity can still attract surveillance, investigation, immigration consequences or civil litigation. Supporters approached by law enforcement should decline to answer questions and speak with an attorney.

This article is reporting and political analysis, not legal advice.

What supporters can do before September 25

Tell the history. Share A/I’s story: the hacklabs, Paranoia, Genoa, the KAOS tours, the Trenitalia victory, the Aruba breach, Plan R*, Noblogs and the Norwegian seizure. Do not allow the government’s description to become the only publicly available account of what A/I is. Build a public defense coalition. Ask independent server collectives, digital-rights organizations, hacklabs, free-software projects, radical libraries, independent publishers, journalists, attorneys, researchers and former users to respond publicly. Preserve the archive. Servers can be seized. Domains can be suspended. Hosts can panic. Back up publicly accessible and historically valuable Noblogs writing, along with A/I’s manifestos, technical documents, legal records and movement history. Record source URLs, authorship, publication dates and retrieval dates. Respect privacy, copyright and removal requests. Do not access private accounts or circumvent security. Personal preservation, research archiving and ordinary journalism are not the same as publicly operating replacement infrastructure; anyone considering a public mirror should first seek qualified advice.

Document over-compliance. Record companies, banks, registrars, platforms and institutions terminating services or removing material. Preserve notices and correspondence. The public record should show how far the designation reaches beyond its formal language. Demand answers. Ask digital-rights groups, European institutions and public officials whether they will permit American sanctions to dismantle an Italian communications collective. Ask what protection exists for European infrastructure, users and archives. Organize independently. Hold public discussions about autonomous infrastructure, sanctions, surveillance and material-support law. Publish explainers. Teach encryption. Support independent civil-liberties work opposing expansive terrorism designations. Prepare lawful material support. A/I has historically survived through voluntary donations, but U.S. supporters should not send or reroute money while the designation applies without a clear authorization. Digital-rights and legal organizations can independently investigate lawful support mechanisms, licensing and potential delisting proceedings.

Listen carefully to A/I’s public response while keeping advocacy legally independent. The collective’s statement should inform how its history and circumstances are described. Any coordinated campaign, fundraising channel or direct service requires separate legal consideration. The immediate objective is to make A/I impossible to quietly disappear.

The network called solidarity

A/I has survived corporations demanding censorship, covert police access, confiscated disks, hostile providers, parliamentary attacks and international investigations. The Trenitalia case produced mirrors and a legal victory. The Aruba breach produced Plan R*. Provider censorship produced redundancy.

The Norwegian seizure demonstrated that the network could recover in hours. Each attempt to isolate the collective spread knowledge about how censorship and surveillance operate. Each attack became an opportunity to teach more people how to protect one another. The United States has now transformed that history into a global test. At stake is not only the survival of one Italian hacker collective. It is whether maintaining infrastructure for radical movements can itself be treated as terrorism; whether privacy can be redefined as concealment; whether refusing to collect identifying information can be presented as obstruction; and whether a provider can be held politically and legally responsible for every text, tactic and claim transmitted through its machines.

A/I has spent twenty-five years preparing for the day when a server disappears. It knows how to replace a machine, move a service, restore encrypted data and continue operating after police or providers pull a plug. The United States is attempting something different. It is trying to frighten banks, hosts, registrars, infrastructure providers and supporters around the world into abandoning the collective. Whether that succeeds will depend partly upon A/I’s architecture.

It will also depend upon us.

Between now and September 25, preserve the history. Share the story. Build the coalition. Document the isolation. Teach the tools. Prepare a lawful defense. Do not allow the state to quietly establish that building privacy-preserving infrastructure for dissent is itself an act of terrorism. Twenty-five years ago, ten people gathered around a recycled machine and deliberately took too long configuring it because everyone in the room was supposed to learn. That remains the lesson. Do not leave the knowledge with experts.

Do not leave the infrastructure in one place. Do not leave the targeted to stand alone.

The first server was called Paranoia.

The network it created was called solidarity.

Public statement from Autistici/Inventati: <https://cavallette.noblogs.org/2026/08/10076?ref=wewillfreeus.org>
Today we were made aware that the US Government has targeted a small, volunteer-run, technology collective from Italy with disproportionate sanctions as anyone can read in the Treasury Department Statement, the State Department Statement and the related Executive Order.

We deny all allegations included in the statements, while we strongly affirm our dedication to providing a platform of tools for digital self-defense, addressing the need of free communication for activists and other individuals, groups and associations.

We will not back down, we will keep doing what we have been doing all these years and we will do whatever is in our possibility to counter the false allegations made by a politically desperate administration with the sole intention of swaying people and media attention away from their own violence and warmongering.

Antifascism and anticapitalism are not terrorism. Protesting is not terrorism. And everyone has the right to speak out and to struggle for humanity.

Autistic/Invented Collective — “Socializing knowledge without establishing power”

Stay human.

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From: https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/2026/08/designation-of-autistici-inventati-as-a-specially-designated-global-terrorist/

Today, the Department of State, in partnership with the Department of the Treasury, is announcing the designation of Autistici/Inventati as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist.

Autistici/Inventati (A/I Collective) is an Italy-based extremist group that builds and operates the digital infrastructure for violent Antifa cells and other far-left militants across the world. A/I’s cadre of radical hackers and tech developers provide a full spectrum of services – including encrypted chats and email, web hosting, secure video conferencing and streaming, anonymity shields, and a suite of other technological tools – to Marxist, anarchist, and other left-wing extremist groups in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere. These tools are specifically designed to support the operations of far-left terrorist networks, built to enable them to organize, recruit, communicate, disseminate propaganda, share target information and tactics, and carry out violent attacks – all while remaining anonymous, untraceable, and beyond the reach of the law.

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. The group has become a key node in a transnational campaign by violent and criminal far-left networks to destabilize the United States and its partners across Europe, the Western Hemisphere, and beyond. It currently claims to host roughly 16,000 mailboxes, 1,500 websites, 5,500 mailing lists, and 10,000 “blogs” on its custom-built platform, which militants frequently use to disseminate target information, tactical manuals and techniques, and communiqués about recent attacks.

As a result of today’s action, all property and interests in property of the designated entity that are subject to U.S. jurisdiction are blocked, and all U.S. persons are generally prohibited from engaging in any transactions with them. Financial institutions and other persons may risk exposure to sanctions for engaging in certain transactions or activities involving the designated entities, with prohibitions to include the making of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services by, to, or for the benefit of the designated entities. Engaging in certain transactions involving the designated entities may also risk the imposition of secondary sanctions on participating foreign financial institutions. Violations of U.S. sanctions may result in the imposition of civil or criminal penalties on U.S. and foreign persons.

Today’s action is being taken pursuant to Executive Order 13224, as amended, which targets entities and persons 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. This designation is part of a broader U.S. government effort to address the threat of transnational far-left terrorism.

A/I Collective’s Support for Violent Far-Left Extremist Groups

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.

The anarchist cells responsible for sabotaging rail systems across France, Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands in 2026, relied on A/I Collective tools and services to claim responsibility for the attacks, publish official communiqués, and disseminate manuals for constructing improvised incendiary devices to target railways and other critical infrastructure.
The anarchist cell responsible for sabotaging the Transalpine Pipeline (TAL) in March 2026, which temporarily halted crude oil flows to Austria, Germany, and the Czech Republic, relied on A/I Collective tools and services to claim responsibility for the attack and publish official communiqués, as well as to disseminate a manifesto calling for additional attacks on critical infrastructure and referring adherents to another A/I Collective platform, which provides detailed sabotage manuals as well as maps of vulnerable critical infrastructure across North America.
The far-left extremist network responsible for multiple arson attacks and acts of sabotage against Germany’s rail and energy infrastructure between 2011 and 2026, including a January 2026 attack on Berlin’s power grid that cut power to 45,000 households and resulted in a fatality, relied on A/I Collective tools and services to claim responsibility for attacks, publish official communiques, and disseminate a manifesto calling for additional attacks on energy infrastructure worldwide.
A far-left extremist media group claiming to be a “tool” for global militants to share “essential information” to be “acted upon,” relies on A/I Collective tools and services to publish official communiqués and calls to action for U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organizations such as Armed Proletarian Justice, Informal Anarchist Federation and International Revolutionary Front (FAI/FRI), the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Hamas, Hizballah, National Liberation Army (ELN), New People’s Army (NPA), Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and Revolutionary Class Self-Defense. 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.
Oregon-based Rose City Antifa has relied on A/I Collective tools and services to organize and incite violent and criminal acts domestically, including an attack on Customs and Border Patrol helicopters that led to a federal indictment. Rose City Antifa also used A/I Collective tools and services to disseminate doxing lists and release illegally obtained personal information of Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement, along with calls for targeted attacks on ICE agents in the streets and “in their homes.”
The anarchist cell responsible for waging a violent campaign to prevent the construction of a law enforcement training center in Atlanta, Georgia, relied on A/I Collective tools and services to claim responsibility for violent attacks on law enforcement officers, disseminate doxing lists and illegally obtained private information, threaten government officials and business owners, and circulate instructions for making improvised explosive and incendiary devices to be used against government buildings and local businesses. The cell remains active and still uses A/I Collective tools and services to incite violent and criminal acts against government officials, law enforcement, and critical infrastructure.
The violent far-left extremists, “Jane’s Revenge,” who waged a firebombing campaign against crisis pregnancy centers across the United States, relied on A/I Collective tools and services to publish official communiqués and claims of responsibility for violent and criminal acts and to incite copycat attacks. Four members of the group were later charged for violating federal law and engaging in a “conspiracy against rights” through threats of force and intimidation.
See also: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/exclusive-state-dept-reveals-portland-antifa-connection-hamas-irans-irgc-sweeping-terror-action 
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