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Everyone’s missing the big picture here which is that this targeting of infrastructure providers as “terrorists” is unprecedented and concerning: https://decode
by iamnothere 2mo ago
Everyone’s missing the big picture here which is that this targeting of infrastructure providers as “terrorists” is unprecedented and concerning: https://decode39.com/16319/autistici-inventati-case-sets-a-new-counterterrorism-precedent-irdi-says/ https://decode39.com/16319/autistici-inventati-case-sets-a-n...
If a radical group sets up shop on I2P, are I2P users and devs now terrorists? This is a problem.
What about Monero users/devs? Veilid? Tox? Signal?
- kraken_cult 2mo agoIsn't it just as likely they are using facebook, instagram, and tiktok?
- nonethewiser 2mo ago[flagged]
- beej71 2mo agoAnd political neutrality isn't going to save anyone. Political alignment with the US government is what they're after.
- bjourne 2mo agoAre we going after free speech now?
- nonethewiser 2mo agoHolder v. Humanitarian Law Project ruled that knowingly providing material support to designated terrorist organizations is not protected by the first amendment. https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/561/1 https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/561/1 But I'm curious about your take on this. How would you argue the first amendment protects this?
- inigyou 2mo agoSo it's trivial that if you are the government and you want to arrest someone for speech, you first call them a terrorist organisation and then you can arrest them for speech? Ridiculous.
- ModernMech 2mo agoNot only that, you can disappear them to a remote location and torture them forever without charging them for any crime whatsoever.
- hammock 2mo agoI don’t know much about this, but are you considering “material support or resources” the same thing as speech?
- inigyou 2mo agoThe government is saying that hosting someone's speech is material support, so yes, they are.
- nonethewiser 2mo agoWhere does it say that?
- bjourne 2mo agoI'm uninterested in bot answers. You claimed label X applies so consequence Y applies. Useless. Why is providing people with the means to express themselves to an audience wrong? Please think for yourself; don't resort to labels.
- inigyou 2mo agoThe USA has never had free speech. There's not one time in its history when the government wasn't trying to force people it disagreed with to shut up.
- inigyou 2mo agoOf course, Hacker News evidently can't fathom this basic truth.
- quickthrowman 2mo agoI checked for an official PKK YouTube channel. I found that they don’t have one as they’re a designated foreign terrorist organization* and Google complies with that designation by not allowing them an official presence. Unsure about the others but I doubt any of those companies would allow an official account. Probably individuals that belong to that group have accounts but I don’t know that for sure. * I did not make the designation, I know nothing about the PKK, I am only referencing it.
- nonethewiser 2mo ago[flagged]
- john_strinlai 2mo ago>And even if they were that doesn't mean the US shouldn't sanction them for supporting terrorism. 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?)
- dirasieb 2mo agoexcept they aren't neutral, which is the whole point
- john_strinlai 2mo agodid you read the part where nonethewiser said "And even if they were [neutral] that doesn't mean the US shouldn't sanction them for supporting terrorism."? 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.
- jayGlow 2mo agoi would agree there as long as the providers are actually neutral they should be free from culpability. we shouldn't encourage providers to restrict who they serve because of potential liability, that's giving them way to much power.
- inigyou 2mo agoIsn't forcing a provider to do business with everyone who asks just as bad? You're saying noblogs should be compelled to host nazi blogs. (Actual Nazis, not a euphemism. People who want Jews to be gassed.) You're also saying wedding cake bakers should be compelled to bake cakes for gay weddings.
- tptacek 2mo agoIf 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.
- inigyou 2mo agoImpossible for a public thing though, noblogs.org will always be traceable to where noblogs.org is hosted because that's how the packets get there. You can maintain much better opsec in a two way communication than a broadcast.
- tptacek 2mo agoRight, I'm only moved to comment by the implications being drawn on this thread that Signal and WhatsApp are next. Different fact patterns and different legal standards.
- dpc050505 2mo agoMonero 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.
- sroussey 2mo agoThey will only catch the amateurs. But they can pat themselves on the back I guess that did something.
- OsrsNeedsf2P 2mo agoIt does more than catch amateurs, it's a heavy blow against the adoption and usefulness
- cyberax 2mo agoSounds better and better!
- fchicken 2mo agoPoor government has to fight crime the old fashioned way. Ridiculous.
- jijijijij 2mo agoThis isn't comparable to the legality issues in particular countries, a comparatively minor threat for FOSS software projects. If the US declares your organization as terrorist, you'll lose banking access globally by leveraging the SWIFT system. The US influence has always been problematic, but this is now blatantly abused for MAGA populism. 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.
- foul 2mo agoIt 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.
- inigyou 2mo agoI think the same people who opposed a/i sanctions (not AI sanctions but they're really missing out by not exploiting that confusion) also opposed sanctions for """islamic terrorism""" and for """cybercrime""".
- busterarm 2mo ago[flagged]
- fchicken 2mo ago[flagged]
- otabdeveloper4 2mo agoErm, but what about saying mean hateful words?? That makes them, like, the bad guys, don't you think?!
- 2mo ago
- fchicken 2mo agoIt's just incredible how spiteful the federal government is towards its constituency
- GolfPopper 2mo agoNot really. It's not like they're going after actual terrorists.
- dadjoker 2mo ago[dead]
- forshaper 2mo agoIn a much lighter but similar move, Suno is now associating exporting generated music with the behavior of "bad actors."
- logological 2mo agoThis 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.)
- colechristensen 2mo agoThere is a balance that needs to be struck between freedoms and rule of law and it's quite rare to be able to actually have discussions about how to strike that balance because most folks willing to discuss have a simplistic but vaguely absolute position favoring one extreme or another and can never come to the point of deciding of where to draw the lines of enough freedom or enough control.
- LastTrain 2mo agoThe anti-spam community can’t throw you in jail or fine you.
- inigyou 2mo agoIt can ban you from the internet though. The whole internet, all of it, no joke. I've been blocked by Cloudflare and Cloudfront several times today, and it's not because of spam, it's because I'm not identifiable through my IP address and therefore offer no advertising value.
- jmyeet 2mo agoHave 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.
- shevy-java 2mo ago> 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.
- insane_dreamer 2mo agoI agree that ultimately they'll try to target Signal. Meredith (Whittaker) has a tough job on her hands. Much admiration.
- 99742808543 2mo ago[dead]
- otterley 2mo agoThey'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/ 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/2026/08/designation-of-autistici-inventati-as-a-specially-designated-global-terrorist/ https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/20...)
- iamnothere 2mo agoWhat about software projects (such as anonymous messengers) with political stances, who state the kinds of people their software is intended to help? Is that material assistance? How is Signal not providing material assistance if someone alerts them that “terrorists” are now using their platform? Sanctioning providers who host political groups, even if it’s extreme politics, is something new. It’s reminiscent of the Bush admin going after Indymedia, which was a huge violation of free speech and was obviously politically targeted. It’s extra ridiculous because we fund and supply the PKK (via their YPG affiliates), which makes this look like a fig leaf for the real goal of disrupting left politics. I don’t like the radical left, but I don’t think this is constitutionally allowed. I feel like we need some bold lines drawn around this to make sure this power doesn’t get misused.
- matheusmoreira 2mo agoIt'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.
- mindslight 2mo agoI'd say the more salient dynamic is mass communication increasing the power of propaganda (now individually tailored!) making it so people are increasingly tolerant those lines being crossed. People voted for this, right? There are legitimate understandable gripes underlying Trumpism. Propaganda is able to use that frustration as raw input, and twist it to convince people to support things that directly make their gripes worse! How much did we hear about inflation and the price of eggs, and yet forty trillion dollars more in the hole and now they cheer for it. Sometime during the Obama years I came up with the realization that the primary information flow in democracy (especially a two-party democracy like the US) isn't the commonly accepted people->government, but rather goes parties->people. The act of "choosing" a candidate makes people have an affinity for everything that politician goes on to do, even when they would have rejected most of it. Trumpism, specifically how people who considered themselves "conservative" didn't look at his abject failure of a first term and send him permanently packing in favor of someone with leadership or patriotism, has thoroughly proven this out.
- hereme888 2mo agoWhat sort of logic is this? I use I2P and no one sanctioned me or labeled me a terrorist.
- cogman10 2mo agoI'd look at the Prairieland Detention Center Case to understand how broadly and aggressively this government is using "terrorism" to go after political opponents. Daniel Rolando Sanchez-Estrada got 30 years in prison for moving a box of magazines related to the protest. He wasn't even at the actual protest. Several people got decades in jail because the FBI successfully convinced a jury that setting off fireworks near a detention center on the 4th of july was actually detonating bombs. And that because one idiot brought a gun and shot it, they are all guilty. It's very much not far fetched that you as an I2P node could get hit with a terrorism charge if some political enemy ends up using your node. That's on the same level of moving pamphlets for a protest.
- Amezarak 2mo ago> Several people got decades in jail because the FBI successfully convinced a jury that setting off fireworks near a detention center on the 4th of july was actually detonating bombs. And that because one idiot brought a gun and shot it, they are all guilty. The USG has a somewhat different description of events, and appears to have had video that they showed a jury. > The defendants dressed in “black bloc”—dark clothing with head and face coverings that concealed their identities—designed to hide each individual’s identity but also to aid and abet those members engaged in illegal acts by making members indistinguishable from one another to law enforcement. Evidence introduced at trial revealed that the defendants brought eleven firearms, body armor, and eleven military-grade first aid kits with tourniquets and other items to treat gunshot wounds to the scene of the attack. [...] After ANTIFA Cell members arrived at the detention facility, they began shooting off and throwing fireworks (explosives) at the facility and vandalizing vehicles and a guard shack on Prairieland property. [...] Witnesses testified that an Alvarado police officer responded to the scene after correctional officers called 911. When the officer began issuing commands to defendant Nathan Baumann, Benjamin Song can be heard on police bodycam video yelling, “get to the rifles!” and then he opened fire on the officers, striking the Alvarado police officer in the neck as the unarmed correctional officers ducked and ran for cover. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/leader-antifa-cell-members-north-texas-sentenced-100-years-prison-terrorist-attack-ice https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/leader-antifa-cell-members-no... Note you can see in the pictures they were definitely not just setting off fireworks "near" the detention facility, but from the camera stills its obviously intended as harassment. And "some idiot" didn't bring a gun, they were all part of a group, they brought lots of guns, and he actually shot a police officer during their "protest." Note also that the USG explicitly uses the word "fireworks", contrary to your framing. Yeah, sorry, if you a) join a group that states it wants to overthrow the USG b) go with a bunch of members to a federal facility as part of a violent protest c) set off fireworks, vandalize everything in reach, and d) shoot a cop, you are all going to prison, and that makes perfect sense.
- fnordpiglet 2mo agoThe 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
- hightrix 2mo ago> The only way radical authoritarians survive on 30% approval ratings is apathy. And voter suppression, vote manipulation, or simply force. I agree with you in that barring the above, there is no logical reason a vast majority of all elections should lean away from MAGA/GOP considering the state of the country.
- veeti 2mo agoEven if Barack Obama himself was re-elected and the Democrats gained a 102% supermajority, does anybody seriously believe this sanction in particular would be reversed?
- aorloff 2mo agoIf the Dems get the House and Senate, expect a lot of reversals. I would imagine we might even have some "settlements" with the "DOJ" before the end of Trumps term
- fnordpiglet 2mo agoI expect it will be by the courts regardless and there will be a massive federal register journal based rollback of the Trump administration and a declaration that all regulation reverts to 2024 by default.
- cindyllm 2mo ago[dead]
- hardbass 2mo agoThere is no resolving this until at least the maga generation dies off.
- stillpointlab 2mo agoI 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.
- applfanboysbgon 2mo agoYou feel ambivalent about eg. HN not being held liable for some random user signing up and posting, say, a terroristic threat on it? You realise that if platforms/HN were legally punished for that, no website could accept user content, ever, and you are effectively suggesting the end of public communication on the internet?
- stillpointlab 2mo agoYou are mostly right about my ambivalence (re: liability) but wrong about the conclusion. > no website could accept user content, ever, and you are effectively suggesting the end of public communication on the internet? That does not follow. Just like financial services are forced to KYC, there would have to be some similar provision. For example, a site might choose not to have anonymization and then liability passes through a KYC chain. If a site wanted anonymous then the burden would be on moderation before it became public. I think this probably already happens in large extent where images are scanned to avoid bad things appearing on public sites and there is already liability around that. I know that isn't a popular position. It would change the entire character of the Internet. And it couldn't just be thrust upon people since the current contract is one of promised anonymity (even if that is probably not true wrt state actors).
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
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- Terr_ 2mo ago
- dev1ycan 2mo agoSignal is a honeypot
- TheqO 2mo agoI think you have to assume any USA/5 eyes based org is compromised. But only NSA/CIA level access and local law enforcement or politicians. So unless you are a terrorist or high level threat it wouldn't be accessed.
- DaSHacka 2mo agoSo true, please use random no-name services with unvetted E2EE crypto or mainstream services with none instead. Much better than Signal, the platform of choice for politicians, feds, and security researchers for their personal and private communications.
- Fnoord 2mo agoHaha, no, EncroChat and Anom were. The official clients (Android and iOS) which use it contain known vulnerabilities.
- mlindner 2mo agoI2P don't ideologically vet their users nor does Signal. A/I Collective does. That's kind of the pointe of all this.
- saidnooneever 2mo agoa lot of fools beleive that if they facilitate the means somehow they will be free to do so. Your rights do not matter. Laws do not matter. If your technology is used by someone for bad, then someone trying to prevent that bad will some day come knocking. Law or not. Rights or not. The only thing you can thus do is protect yourself. If you get taken out, that is you relying on your Rights and Laws. They dont exist and wont protect you.
- woodpanel 2mo agoWhy are you leaving out the important details: You can't as an ISP prevent malicious actors from using your service, but you do can assist the government - in the case of the recent attacks on Berlins electricity that caused a fatality the German - to hand over the data to help assist law enforcement. If US state-department's claims [1] are true, did noblogs.org do so – help German authorities track Terrorists or did it cover for them? Because their statement does say nothing about the claims made by the state department. [1] https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/2026/08/designation-of-autistici-inventati-as-a-specially-designated-global-terrorist/ https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/20...
- throwawayqqq11 1mo ago> did they help authorities to track Terrorists or did they cover up? Nice framing. Binary "either you are with authorities or you are against them", no consideration that "terrorist" is up for courts to decide, not govs or ISPs and that complying-or-not with a legal-or-not order can have many reasons and outcomes. Would you call apple, refusing to decrypt a terror org too? Framing those subjects as terrorists is true darkage backwards reasoning. A/I calls it radical activism, the US gov calls it marxist terrorism. To me, its clear who is more credible.
- woodpanel 1mo agothere's no framing. just the law. if you are not handing over terrorist's data you are abating them. what that data is (encrypted or not), is an entirely different thing. oh, and if you believe apple doesn't cooperate with the us govt., good luck!
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- giov4 2mo ago[dead]
- dlahoda 2mo agoAre not they sanctioned because of Free Palestine label? Any sanctioned org for just being p2p/crypto so far? Seems you misdirect reasons.
- wewro 2mo ago[dead]
- varispeed 2mo agoInteresting. Usually comments with "people are missing the big picture" are met with massive number of downvotes.