Back to News
Advertisement
Advertisement

⚡ Community Insights

Discussion Sentiment

28% Positive

Analyzed from 2006 words in the discussion.

Trending Topics

#terrorist#government#organization#don#services#state#https#means#used#using

Discussion (46 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

unfocsoabout 1 hour ago
Really sad, and also a testament of the fact that as much as we think we try to be indipendent, eventually once somebody starts putting enough pressure on the people around you (and you turn from "a neutral customer" to "a liability") the path to isolation is very short.
stymaar9 minutes ago
This. When the US government decides to label you “terrorist organization”, it means that you are now targeted by the most potent state actor on earth, which will go as far as blowing up weddings in your neighborhood to stop you.

So unless you're willing to become a literal terrorist organization and die with a bunch of your friends in an uphill battle (not technically unwinnable, but at least lopsided and the casualties will be tremendous), the only option is to cave.

Waterluvian2 minutes ago
Weddings if you’re lucky. They’ll also murder 150+ girls at school.
arcticfoxabout 1 hour ago
Could someone point me to some background on this whole incident or write a quick one? I don't know who they are or what's going on but it seems important.
coldpie9 minutes ago
The US Republican party has been inventing an increasingly elaborate alternate reality fiction in order to convince their voters to keep voting for policy positions that obviously work against those voters' own interests. One component of this alternate reality is a fictional terrorist organization called "antifa." They claim that anyone who does not align with their policies is a member of this organization. This allows them to use the anti-terrorism laws passed in the wake of 9/11 and similar incidents against their political opponents. The US government claims someone who used the A/I service was a member of this fictional organization, and used those anti-terrorism laws to declare that A/I is supporting terrorism and so threatened sanctions against the banks A/I was using. No access to banking means A/I is shutting down.
giov438 minutes ago
also for context this is a shorter version and represents well the situation https://www.inventati.org/who/collective

"After 2005 we have been constantly pestered by prosecutors and security forces (and even by the Vatican! [4]) asking us to hand over users’ data and identities and we are proud to say we were always able to answer: we are sorry, but we do not have them."

This is tech guys supporting with infra real freedom of speech! even more important nowadays! jumping to the violent antifa narrative means ignoring a lot of important things.

hiddencost13 minutes ago
The US government is labeling anyone who says they're "anti fascist" as terrorists, and shut down a major Italian private email provider using that rationale.
unfocsoabout 1 hour ago
And yes, they could relocate to TOR, I2P, use P2P websites, torrents, and only accept cryptos for donations. But eventually you'll need to put down a credit card on file to buy a domain, and that domain needs to be owned by somebody.
msm_24 minutes ago
>But eventually you'll need to put down a credit card on file to buy a domain, and that domain needs to be owned by somebody.

You don't need to pay to host onion websites (.onion domains are free and have no central registry). Though that of course really limits the possible outreach, because most people are not used to browsing onionsites.

TowerTall25 minutes ago
njal.la (no affiliate) exists for that purpose. It is a privacy focused domain service that is run by the people behind the pirate bay.

[1] https://njal.la/domains/

unfocso5 minutes ago
Njalla is not ICANN accredited, so they cannot register domains. They buy them and then lease them out to you.

The issue is, now they are the legal owners and liable for the content of the website, and they also support PayPal, which will absolutely drop them the moment they get sanctioned.

dgellow17 minutes ago
You’re still subject to ICANN, an American org. There is no escaping the US government if you’re using the public web for your infra
andlarryabout 1 hour ago
Here is the State Department's rationale: https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/20...
sph33 minutes ago
Like trying to scrutinize the motives of a complete lunatic.
Normal_gaussian43 minutes ago
I wasn't aware of this group; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autistici/Inventati is their wiki article, but it is a little light on details.

Some of the claims are interesting - "Decision making in the group takes places collectively instead of through majority voting." - isn't explained by the sourced article.

InsideOutSantaabout 1 hour ago
I hereby designate the US government an international terrorist organization.
matt123456789about 1 hour ago
What did they do??
dd8601fnabout 1 hour ago
Sounds like providing encrypted communications?

I think we can all see the potential problems with this, even if a specific group is awful.

“The specific claim: a far-left media group that describes itself as a “tool” for militants to share information “to be acted upon” used A/I’s services to publish communiqués and calls to action for U.S.-designated terrorist groups, including FAI/FRI, the IRGC, Hamas, Hizballah, ELN, NPA, PFLP, and PIJ. That same media group was cited in a federal complaint against a domestic terrorist sentenced to 19 years for attacking a federal building and a police car with IEDs.”

SkyeCA34 minutes ago
If you knowingly provide services to violent/terrorist groups you deserve to be shut down. The only reason anyone is upset by this is because they were left aligned and had they been providing services to the far right, neo-nazis, etc everyone would be rightfully cheering.
msm_13 minutes ago
IRGC, Hamas, Hizballah and maybe others are far right organizations, so I don't think this is purely left/right.

And what about signal? I am pretty sure many violent/terrorist groups use it too.

I don't have an opinion about this group, because I didn't even know it existed. But, like often with things related to the free speech, I think this topic is more complex than you make it out to be.

dd8601fn23 minutes ago
I don’t disagree. I just don’t know if they actually were courting bad guys or bad guys used an encrypted services provider. Both? Neither?

And I don’t see anyone hand wringing about that list of bad guys. Calling some of them “left” is pretty ridiculous in the first place.

That part sounds a little like telling on oneself.

rdtscabout 1 hour ago
Can just rename themselves into I/A. “A/I? That’s shut down. We are not affiliated with them…”
GaryBlutoabout 1 hour ago
>The day we discovered we had been designated a global terrorist organization, we promised that we would try to resist as long as this was possible

Eleven days?

-

As a sidenote, I'm rather confused why most sources referred to A/I as simply offering services for "left wing activists"; while this is true, they also offered services to actual, inarguable terrorists. Their services were used to announce firebombs on anti-abortion pregnancy crisis centers.

Now, I don't think they should have been labelled an outright terrorist organisation by many means, but I am astonished by the level of whitewashing.

layer837 minutes ago
I’d like to have more information about what “offered” means here. I’m sure that regular email and hosting providers have been used by terrorists without being designated a terrorist organization themselves.
swiftcoder10 minutes ago
> Eleven days?

How long do you think you could resist a tier-1 nation state coming after you on terrorism charges?

xgulfieabout 1 hour ago
I can't imagine continuing to run something designated by the US as a terrorist organization for for even ONE day
mindslight3 minutes ago
[delayed]
nikunj1809about 1 hour ago
What does it means?
reilly3000about 1 hour ago
The US government designated a long-running web/email hosting services collective that served political dissidents as a terrorist organization.

https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/20...

It means the government won.

monkaijuabout 1 hour ago
Hopefully riseup can pick up some of the slack here, but more decentralized services are needed.
phoronixrlyabout 1 hour ago
Thank you American people! This couldn't have happened without you!
AndrewKemendoabout 1 hour ago
Love these people and what a powerful message

If anyone from A/I is reading this know you always have a place to stay/eat if you need it

Advertisement
righthandabout 1 hour ago
> We are stopping, but the Resistance and ideas do not stop. Stay human.

How will that be if the resistance is not visible to the public. What are all the people using their services supposed to do? I’m guessing there are plans to reform in a few years. Why is the Italian government not protecting them?

lambdaabout 1 hour ago
The Italian government is also a far-right government like the US, so is aligned in wanting to suppress left-wing views.
oblongsquare69about 1 hour ago
I take it as, talk to people in real life and don’t rely on systems that can be shut down.
sphabout 1 hour ago
Fuck you Trump and fuck you US (and the government of a small country in the Mediterranean who's behind all this). Thank you Autistici/Inventati with whom I had my first email account in the dialup era.

I can't wait to see the American hegemony slowly crumble over the next few decades.

jtrnabout 1 hour ago
I also oppose fascism, militarism, racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia, like what A/I do... And none of that is illegal... At least not in any civilised society. So what did they do to trigger so many? I remember the Norwegian stuff (since I’m Norwegian), and I remember thinking it sounded like bullshit to copy their entire server drive when they wanted access to the blog of two people.

From what I could gather, it seems various governments accused them of deliberately providing infrastructure to groups whose violent activities they supported, such as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), with communications associated with railway sabotage, attacks on energy infrastructure and the “Jane’s Revenge” arson campaign (whatever the hell that is).

Here’s a snippet I found on the net: "Italian police installed a server backdoor in 2004 during an investigation into the anarchist collective Crocenera. It was discovered in 2005. According to contemporary EDRi reporting, the access potentially exposed communications belonging to thousands of unrelated users; EDRi explicitly noted that actual collection of unrelated data had not been proven. EDRi’s contemporary report"

Huge disclaimer on this, since it’s just my musings: This might be one of the situations where both sides are in the wrong. It’s possible that A/I willfully turned a blind eye to actual illegal activity by its users, and refused to cooperate with legal investigations. At the same time, various governments, including mine, overreacted and behaved unethically and maybe even illegally because A/I “didn’t want to play ball.”

Just speculation. But the fact that I can’t easily find concrete examples of what A/I supposedly did wrong makes me inclined to feel sympathy for them. I hate unspecific allegations like “facilitation of problematic and terroristic-adjacent activities.” That’s some 1984-ish bullshit.

I have no clue what I’m talking about here, though. Strange situation and too little information...

reilly3000about 1 hour ago
https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/20... This designation offers some specific examples of violence being coordinated using their systems. Some are indeed extreme, if true. That doesn’t invalidate their mission or overall contribution to the world at large; it just was sufficient ammo for extinguishing another threat to power.
swiftcoder5 minutes ago
> https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/20... This designation offers some specific examples of violence being coordinated using their systems

All that demonstrates is that they operated a public email/messaging server. One could have coordinated the exact same things using ProtonMail or Signal.

jtrn33 minutes ago
This does not show what they (A/I) did. The only concrete examples are of bad behavior by some users. Then there’s a bunch of generic claims against A/I, with NO specifics.

So, yeah, it might be true. But I find no concrete examples of what bad stuff A/I themselves did, just their users. Personally, I would like for there to be at least SOME concrete examples. Like, “This convicted terrorist had a blog on their infrastructure, and A/I refused to hand over data they had, even when presented with a valid court order.” Or something like that. Is it too much to ask that the government provide some concrete evidence, not just abstract vage accusations, when doing something as drastic as designating someone a terrorist organization? It would seem so...

This is a knock on the state.gov item, not your comment. Your comment was good.

SpicyLemonZest7 minutes ago
The problem is that, as A/I themselves explained (https://www.inventati.org/who/collective), they worked hard to ensure that they do not possess any evidence of or data about who is using their infrastructure.
philstephenson4 minutes ago
> “That doesn’t invalidate their mission or overall contribution to the world at large;”

Give me a break. Ends to not justify all means. This is a completely appropriate response by the state department.

ranyumeabout 1 hour ago
> And none of that is illegal... At least not in any civilised society

I mean, the capitalist system is a barbaric system with defenders that do make opposition illegal...

jtrnabout 1 hour ago
Yeah, but there are degrees. I’d rather have a conversation about trans rights here in Oslo than in Afghanistan.
ranyume12 minutes ago
How do you think LGBTQI+ rights came exist? It was not a pretty, blood-free, submissive process. And we're still far from LGBTQI+ rights being normalized.

How about workers rights? Slavery? Any progress that you'd think of as civilizing was not achieved without blood.

akhasgabout 1 hour ago
They happened to host some people who "vandalized" (a couple of graffiti ...) Trump's golf course in Scotland. That action was called "terrorism".

Their site noblogs.org also hosted some PKK friendly articles. like 10 in total. Now that is bound to happen if you host left wing bloggers in the EU. But that was also called terrorism support.

Their problem is that they actively selected the customers and demanded that they abide by their CoC and rules. You should not do that as an ISP.

jtrn25 minutes ago
That’s at best a simplistic framing. Something was going on long before Trump was elected. The hubbub in Norway happened back in 2010, before Trump was elected. And the Child Exploitation and Internet Pornography Act was used for the very first time to take down their NoBlogs site in 2007 (according to Wikipedia).
123hz16 minutes ago
You go from "I have no clue what I’m talking about here, though. Strange situation and too little information..." to "That’s at best a simplistic framing."?

And allude to specific incidents without links? WTF?

vallerieabout 1 hour ago
Yet another example of the troubling amount of power the United States holds over the internet and global finance.

I really worry about the future of free and open expression over the next few years.

beholeabout 1 hour ago
Deeply troubling and part of a larger initiative. Fascism is blooming under these weird-o monsters.

Dollars to doughnuts there will be HN's finest boot-lickers in the comments running cover for orange and company. Disgusting and traitorous.

elmer2about 1 hour ago
I've been following the collextive for 10 years. They promoted and hosted violent/terrorist activity.

Parler was ripped off the Internet for 1% of this.

You reap what you sow. If you don't support the freedom of people you disagree with politically, I don't support your freedom either.

Covid has forced me to take a hard stance on this.

benregenspan7 minutes ago
Parler was "ripped off the Internet" because it was delisted from app stores and dropped by AWS for violating their ToS due to having (If I remember correctly) approximately zero content moderation, which is not really compatible with the mainstream distribution model they wanted. The owners were not subjected to sanctions by a foreign government.
foul20 minutes ago
You can't follow anything, you're a computer program inside an Azure datacenter.
par3 minutes ago
"created: 62 days ago" -- beyond that, what else makes you think it's a bot?
lukanabout 1 hour ago
"They promoted and hosted violent/terrorist activity."

What kind exactly?