U.S. sanctions against the A/I Collective(inventati.org) Earlier: US Government designates host of noblogs.org a "global terrorist" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49464391 - (131 comments) US sanctions Italian hosting provider Autistici Inventati - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49451343 - (219 comments) |
This is like straight out of every evil villains mouth.
"a: any program for setting up a centralized autocratic national regime with severely nationalistic policies, exercising regimentation of industry, commerce, and finance, rigid censorship, and forcible suppression of opposition. b: any tendency towards or actual exercise of severe autocratic or dictatorial control (as over others within an organization)"
"rigid censorship, and forcible suppression of opposition" is what this is. As specifically and publicly declared actions against a group defining itself as "anti-fascism, anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-homophobia, anti-transphobia, and anti-militarism".
if this isn't matching fascism oppression against anti-fa then what is it?
additionally as context the short history link with more facts is even clearer:
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.
They doxx people they don't like and pass around kids schools/addressess/home addresses/names of spouses, for the sole purpose of violence.
They had a flier for 'laser tag' hosted there, which was a group meet to flash laser pointers in the faces of ICE agents.
I've been following this 'collective' since 2016.
It's about time the US did something about it.
how does it encourage it? can you show an example?
>They had a flier for 'laser tag' hosted there
what does this mean?
>which was a group meet to flash laser pointers in the faces of ICE agents.
Which group? reference? link? examples?
>I've been following this 'collective' since 2016. It's about time the US did something about it.
well this explains a lot about your point of view, but can you expand or prove your above statements?
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.
Given that SWIFT is headquartered in Belgium and Italy's major bank is one of the 24 banks on the SWIFT board, how does this "blockade" in SWIFT happen? Is the inference that all of the banks bow down to the US, even though the US only represents 2 out of the 24 banks on the board?
E le genti che passeranno Ti diranno «Che bel fior!
[...]
È questo il fiore del partigiano morto per la libertà!
The slippery slope continues.
What was that...
muummuummmmemmmeuuuu...
BANG
They are sanctioned, okay, and? What happens practically.
In the USA - the consequences should be only related to USA pertinent actors. The newspapers in Italy say, "there is no judgement against them in Italy".
• 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.
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.
This is NOT a competition nor a championship about which dictatorship can inflict the most pain and destruction to the world.
Nobody is rooting for such a "winner".
Criticize all the despicable actions of such stinky regimes, regardless of if they are in Putin's Russia, in Trump's US, or wherever else.
We are NOT in a race to the bottom.
We shall never forget our values, as Humans and as Earth-dwellers.
SWIFT is headquartered in Belgium. Only 2 banks out of the total 24 on the board of directors is US banks. Unless there's a hostile takeover of the SWIFT organisation by the US, I think this is a bit of a stretch. (Plot-twist: Italy is on the board of directors.)
US laws and sentences does not apply beyond US borders unless differently agreed.
A US sanction is neither a local (to all of SWIFT) or international law. The question still stands.
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.
Ridiculous.
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.
Not really, unless exchanges don't let you withdraw coins into your own wallet? It's trivial for someone to buy another coin like BTC/ETH then use it to purchase Monero via defi.
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.
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.
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.
It is impossible to make a secure system without the continuous transmission of dummy messages to large numbers of users.
You can maintain much better opsec in a two way communication than a broadcast.
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.
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.
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/20...
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.
* I did not make the designation, I know nothing about the PKK, I am only referencing it.
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.
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.
Any sanctioned org for just being p2p/crypto so far?
Seems you misdirect reasons.
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.
Per the Treasury Department:
"The Autistici Inventati is an Italy-based far-left organization that provides a range of technological tools and services to violent left-wing extremist groups, including website hosting on foreign servers, encrypted email accounts, chat and video conferencing, and digital architecture associated with its “Noblogs” platform. Autistici Inventati identifies itself as an “anti-fascist” and “anti-militarist” organization opposed to capitalism and exclusively provides its services to vetted individuals, collectives, and groups it perceives to be aligned with its ideology, including to sanctioned terrorist organizations such as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been designated by the United States, United Kingdom, and European Union for its use of terrorist tactics leading to thousands of deaths in Türkiye, Iraq, and Syria since its establishment in 1984.
"Autistici Inventati is being designated pursuant to E.O. 13224, as amended, for having materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods and services to or in support of, an act of terrorism." https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sb0616/
Per the State Department: "The A/I Collective provides encrypted tools and services to numerous violent far-left extremist groups operating in the United States and around the world. Many of these groups have relied on the A/I Collective’s digital infrastructure to plot or incite violent attacks, recruit others to engage in criminal activity, publish official communiqués by U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organizations, and disseminate maps of critical infrastructure, along with instructions for building improvised explosive and incendiary devices – all routed through a network of foreign servers intended to conceal criminal activity from law enforcement." They then go on to list the specifics. (https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/20...)
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.
Much better than Signal, the platform of choice for politicians, feds, and security researchers for their personal and private communications.
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.
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.
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?
[1] https://www.wewillfreeus.org/the-server-called-paranoia-defe...
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
Title: A Statement by A/I Collective About US Sanctions
https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/20...
"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...."
"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."
US sanctions Italian hosting provider Autistici Inventati
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49451343
US Government designates host of noblogs.org a "global terrorist"
Everyone's a terrorist nowadays.
"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.
Second best thing is give them money ASAP since they're going to be unable to receive it in two weeks.
* 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.
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.
> A/I (Autistici/Inventati, pronounced [au’tistiʧi]-[iŋ’vɛntati], or [iŋvɛn’tati]) was born in 2001 from an encounter of individuals and collectives of the autonomous anticapitalist movement interested in technology and active in the digital rights struggle. We believe that this world is far from being the best world possible. We react by providing a platform and tools for digital self-defense addressing the need of free communication for activists and other individuals.
> All of our services are provided for free, without any form of control or commoditization of the personal user data. We don’t receive any form of compensation for our work. We are volunteers exploiting the experiences we accumulated over years of technological, political and legal research while doing radical activism, and we are motivated and inspired by the principles of solidarity and self organization.
From their about page:
> 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. Our principles are fairly straightforward: the world should not be run on money, should be rooted in solidarity, community, mutual help, equal rights and freedom, and social justice. Easy, isn’t 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. On top of that, one has to share our basic attitude towards money and the capitalistic world: a deep feeling of uneasyness and unrest.
Can we all agree that this is an assault on the First Amendment?
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/desi...
(If you're opposed to antifascists what does that make you?)
> 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.
It also says their manifesto was written in 2002.
You can use the Wayback machine to see older versions.
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/)
If you knew people who actually did actions, they'd be right in not telling you about their actions until they really really trusted you to defend them with your life. Loose lips sink ships when you're going against a government.
> 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.
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.
Yeah we should ban any non-mainstream political views and designate them as terrorist
It provides email accounts, mailing lists, blogs, websites, chat and VPN access.
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.
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...
> on energy infrastructure
that's not violence
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 logic seems to be that Hamas has committed terrorist attacks against Israel, and is also the government of Palestine, so anyone fighting for the human rights of Palestinian people is actually materially supporting Hamas terrorism against Israelis. That does not really track if you know anything at all about what's going on in Palestine right now, or what people's actual criticisms of Israel are.
The US regime is an extremely violent group, so I that's certainly the issue.
It even comes in the effect at the very probability of genocide occuring. Preventing new armaments being sold to Israel is thus the rational and responsible thing to do, for example what Spain has been doing by refusing the transportation of arms through their country. This off course earns you some powerful, heavily moneyed enemies.
Edit: This was an attempt to explain why civilians are spray painting Elbit's military planes.
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.
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.
With such strong proof as "A far-left extremist media group ... relies on A/I ... to publish official communiqués and calls to action for [various organizations]" This is what we in the business call a direct proof A/I materially supports Hezbollah terrorist actions. Clear direct link, simply because all alternate explanations are impossible. Everyone is happy that americans saved the day, again!
State Dept so in the clear that in this "This same group was recently cited in a federal criminal complaint against a domestic terrorist who was sentenced to 19 years in prison for targeting a federal building and police car with improvised explosive devices." they don't name the group nor the "terrorist" because if one would check, improvised explosive device would turn out to be a molotov.
So Casey Goonan throws molotov at a police car -> Abolition Media (the unnamed group) publishes some claims about the attack -> A/I, a comm platform provider on another continent now suddenly provides "material support for violent extremism" in the US, just because Abolition Media used its blog infra. Cool story. Despite both links being tenous at best.
And such it will be with lot of other claims in there, given that US is led by absolute clauns and psychos currently.
Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/561/1
There is a law (18 U.S.C. § 2339B) that says you cant knowingly provide material support for designated foreign terrorist organizations. A law firm wanted to provide financial support and legal services to some, including the PKK (the same group A/I was accused of helping). They argued the federal law violated their first amendment rights.
The court concludes that the first amendment doesn't protect your ability to provide material support including services and communication equipment and the law still stands today.
Im curious. How would you argue the first amendment protects knowingly providing material support to designated foreign terrorist organizations?
Unless you're just saying the court disagrees, which is fair, but yuck
Providing material support to perpetrators of these actions would go above "speech".
By the argument laid out by the government here, merely reading writings by terrorists would be illegal. You'd be providing "material support" by helping them spread their message to yourself - regardless of whether you're processing their writings with your network and computing device, or trafficking in their printed books.
This is, to be clear, lying nonsense.
You cant judge a group by its name. Otherwise, Make America Great Again is great, the National Socialist German Workers' party seems fine, etc.
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.
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.
Signal's design is "what if WhatsApp wasn't evil" which makes it good for the average user. If you actually want Session or SimpleX, which sacrifice usability for even more privacy, then you know where to find those services.
I would imagine we might even have some "settlements" with the "DOJ" before the end of Trumps term
oh, and if you believe apple doesn't cooperate with the us govt., good luck!
How much more specific can you get?
This group's been sanctioned and persecuted and prosecuted on a smaller scale many times for hosting speech. I think this is the biggest so far, but by no means unique.
We'd need to dig much deeper to understand what their views are.
FWIW: I consider extreme leftists just as dangerous as the extreme right.
There's no actual requirement for violence for it to be terrorism.
It's in the name. Terrifying people into compliance. Well that isn't the case here.
I get your point though. There's a strong push to characterize destruction of property as violence, as part of a push to delegitimize protest. To some people, the police can use physical violence against people to stop a protest and that's okay, whereas if the protestors so much as throw a brick through a window, they're violent extremists.
In this example, Signal itself and anyone associated with it, could not have any bank accounts at all. There wouldn't be any receiving end for donations. Being on the OFAC list means any bank connected through SWIFT wouldn't allow you as customer. Current funds would be immediately frozen, which by itself would probably cause fatal disruption. The OFAC list is an extreme measure, which is why the recent abuse is such a big deal.
As mentioned elsewhere, read up on the Rote Hilfe case to see how this kinda thing plays out right now. "Antifa Ost", four people beating up (NOT murdering) Neonazis were declared a designated global terror network by the Trump admin in 2025. Those four "global terrorist" were all already in custody, on trial in Germany at the time, hardly a threat. Rote Hilfe lost their bank account, because of weak association through legal defense support. Mind you, Rote Hilfe is a traditional German political institution being only cancelled once before: 1933. And the GLS bank who cancelled their account proactively fearing SWIFT exclusion, would be considered a socialist endeavor by US standards. That's the reach of OFAC.
So, to evade sanctions, Signal would need to maintain internationally ostracized money laundering networks on the scale of global terror financing, or North Korean operations. They are not some hidden service black market, where any hosting is sufficient. Paying AWS millions for large scale, low-latency CDN infrastructure with highly suspicious finances ain't gonna fly. I assume, due to statistic correlation, considering the necessary volumes moved, it's probably simply impossible to pull off.
And of course, Signal's income is in large parts coming from various nation's registered funds, which obviously wouldn't participate in highly illegal financing. Individual donations won't cut it (and also expose any donor to being flagged for terror financing, losing access to their own accounts). Not to mention, money laundering infrastructure isn't free, so only a fraction of donations would make it anyway...
The problem here is also Signal's centralized nature. If it was built for a decentralized, self-hostable backend, where only the code itself has to escape repression, it wouldn't be as vulnerable. However, as with other decentralized projects, we likely wouldn't talk about it as hypothetical heavy loss due to wide-spread adoption and foundation of common privacy.
Signal's whole mission is to enable e2ee at scale, for the average person. OFAC listing would be the end of Signal and any similar project.
I don't see anything wrong with that. They make 0 money from this. It's 100% run by volunteers. They don't support any orgs that could afford to do it themselves.
It's like if a group of you and your friends got together and gave tech support to any orgs that care about something you're passionate about (e.g. ending FPTP voting)
Criminal organizations tend not to care what their lawyers think around behaving well; they primarily seek them out for cover after they're already in trouble.
> 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).
To echo what you said to the other poster, that does not follow:
1. Simply repealing Section 230 would not create some kind any novel "know your poster" legal requirement that doesn't previously exist.
2. Most sites would not have any incentive to do it either, since knowing the original author's identity would not shield them from liability. In some cases it would increase their liability instead!
> If a site wanted anonymous then the burden would be on moderation before it became public.
No, for most sites the opposite would occur.
One of the big things Section 230 does is it declares that the act of moderating does not create involvement and liability for the message. It means you can block things without becoming a sorta-co-author of the things that pass the filter.
Repeal that, and sites will be forced into either (A) basically no moderation so no liability or (B) blocking 99% and letting through the safest 1% they're willing to be liable for.
_______________
Useful links:
* "Everything You Know About Section 230 Is Wrong (But Why?) " https://www.techdirt.com/2021/10/29/everything-you-know-abou...
* "Hello! You've Been Referred Here Because You're Wrong About Section 230 Of The Communications Decency Act " - https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referre...
Not me, I said I was ambivalent about it; don't put words in my mouth. My words were: "there would have to be some similar provision [to KYC]". Similar, not the same. Not nothing.
Everything else sounds like you imagining/speculating about what some future provision would look like. And your imagined fears don't play into my ambivalence.
That's the definition every undemocratic occupying power uses.
British people attacking British forces are not sabotaging an occupying or invading military.
> 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
They don't receive any money for this. It's 100% volunteer services.
No, with these limited elements. The filter may just be "of course I will not provide my (free) service to people that may use it in what I call a repugnant way".
When you know Harry is a rogue CEO, say a misinformation spreader or the issuer of unethical products, and you refuse to work for it, to provide it your services: does that make you an "activist"? Many people will call it "just the normal right thing to do". This is similar to people here calling certain positions "centrist" or "extremist" - and that entirely depends on how those positions are interpreted beyond their dumb (not telling) label, and on the dumb labels over said labels.
That's certainly a take.
My personal take is that 4chan actually complies with the US laws, specifically the ones around promptly removing+reporting any illegal content that the US cares about (e.g., terrorism threats/CSAM/etc.), and 8chan doesn't.
Out of curiosity, what makes you consider 4chan to be a honeypot, as opposed to it just being a platform that simply complies with the relevant laws?
I will admit, I've spent barely a few minutes on 8 in my lifetime, so I am not equipped to judge the nuance of their situation much. With 4 though, it's been an on-and-off thing for me over the past ~15 years.
https://www.ms.now/opinion/jeffrey-epstein-4chan-chris-poole
2. Untrue. I heavily used both (not as a right-winger; just as a decades-long anonymous imageboard user who sometimes finds it fun to rile people up in /pol/ boards). 8chan's was a lot worse and was shut down for a reason.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/desi...
Claiming to be anti-fascist doesn't actually make them anti-fascist nor excuse them from breaking laws.
During a 2024 raid on an Elbit Systems factory near Bristol, Samuel Corner—a Palestine Action activist—struck police sergeant Kate Evans in the back with a sledgehammer while she was on her knees arresting another activist. She suffered a fractured lumbar spine, was off work for three months, and later had to give up her rank. Corner was convicted of inflicting grievous bodily harm and sentenced to seven years and eight months.
Also groups protesting Islamic violence rarely drive their cars through St John’s Wood screaming “kill the Jews rape their daughters” but that’s just my own personal experience.
https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/palestine-group-attacks-raf-...
Its definitely not OK to vandalise things, and if is not terrorism what is it? War? In which case expect the military to shoot back.
What about their attack that disabled a police officer mentioned in this thread. That is an attack on her body.
Anti fascist => anti dictatorship.
Anti fascist means that you don't like fascism and that you are not going to let it happen passively.
(Tired of explaining the obvious. But I guess that somebody has to.)
A dictatorship mechanically leads to a situation where the governing group is working for their own wealth, thus in this case the "group" is the governing class. The extent and definition of that class is voluntarily limited so that wealth and power converges to them.
Now you see it? Yes that is a fascism, meaning that:
dictatorship => fascism
And the reverse stems from the "groupism" (i.e. tribalism) of fascism, which entails that you need exclude large portions of the population from the political system.
As this "group" definition becomes narrower and narrower (in order to make more wealth converge to the alleged "true humans" of its center), it becomes a harsher and harsher dictatorship, and finally a strongman regime.
fascism => dictatorship
"Antifa" factions in the Spanish Civil War ultimately did not win and accidentally enable a Spanish DPRK, but they still were perfectly capable of being and doing evil, such as committing mass rape and shooting of nuns.
Anti-fascists are not concerned with the magical weight of this in-group designation. They are concerned with all things non-fascist.
If somebody says something nice and does nothing, that's good.
If at the same time somebody does something bad, that's bad.
That does not remove the evaluation (nice or bad) of the speech alone.
Saying "I am against this thing that is objectively despicable" is GOOD.
So, saying to be anti fascist is good.
Saying to be anti fascist and doing fascist things is bad.
I don't know how much more obvious things I am supposed to explain...
I guess there is no limit to it.
You are probably thinking about the Communist factions among the Republican forces opposed to Franco.
ALL of the Republican factions were opposed to Franco and to fascism, not only the Communists.
And, besides, nobody was calling themselves "antifa" at that time, because that was damn obvious that if you were in the Resistance, you were opposed to that despicable tyrant. But they were absolutely anti fascists, all of them and not only the Communists.
Does a company moderator need to review every post? That might be feasible for a low-population community, but it can be expensive.
But let's assume that's the protocol. A post is submitted and reviewed by a moderator. How does the moderator know if the post violates a law? Is the moderator a lawyer with knowledge of all laws? If not, every post is a roll of the dice for paying unpredictable fines or the end of the business.
Without Section 230, any lawyers' advice for hosting user content would be simple: "Don't."
1. stillpointlab: "I'm ambivalent about Section 230. Also [other things not discussed further]."
2. applfanboysbgon: "Hey, you can't be ambivalent about Section 230, removing it would be disastrous, any website like HN would be in shambles."
3. stillpointlab: "Websites would be OK if that happened, there would just have to be some provisions around anonymity."
5. Terr_: "Where did this talk of anonymity come from? That's not what Section 230 does."
6. stillpointlab: "Who said anything about removing Section 230? I didn't say that and I wasn't talking about that happening."
7. [Error: Recursion detected]
In other words, the thread was was steered into "what if Section 230 went away" (at #2) and your reply looks as if you recognized that and proceeded to build on it.
The US does not give a damn about PKK. They used the Kurdish sister organizations in Syria and Iran. They condemn PKK because Erdogan wants it.
The US would have zero issues with a Kurdish state comprising parts of Turkey and Iran that splinters the region even more.
In this context, "designated foreign terrorist organizations" is not an explanation, but a tautology. The matter at hand is how and why something got onto that list.
The antifa remark relates to the Rote Hilfe situation. In my opinion, it's an example of how populist rhetoric became a major overreach with real consequences prior to the incident at hand. Rote Hilfe had a very weak relation to "Antifa Ost" (hardly worth US attention). That's how they got cancelled: https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/20...
So the antifa moral panic is indeed very much relevant.
But decide for yourself, if "Antifa Ost" deserves US anti-terrorism attention to the extent of OFAC sanctions, or if it's maaaybe populist action... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dresden_left-wing_extremism_tr...
Incidentally, funny how the NSU isn't on that list, hm?
You claim it was more than just moving a box of magazines. I see no court documents or reporting saying it was anything more than that.
For correct information, visit: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/leader-antifa-cell-members-no...
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-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.
https://prairielanddefendants.com/what-really-happened-at-pr...
I'm not going to just take the word of anybody in the US government without listening to the other side. The description on "Episode 10 Who Attacked" is the other side.
It’s absolutely not a normal thing to do for entities that want to use the “we are just infrastructure, our users are responsible for their actions” excuse.
In fact, such entities (e.g. power grid, telecom) are often legally prohibited from choosing their clients, and in exchange aren’t held responsible for what their clients do with their services.
So if you had a hammer in your yard, and somebody took it and misused it, you would not be responsible, but if you gave it to your neighbour and he used it to crush a skull, you the owner of the hammer would be responsible? It is clearly at least the opposite. Abstract from the "paid service", but see that.
The rule you propose (filtering would create responsibility) makes no sense. Try to show why it would be so, maybe.
That’s a very different situation compared to the standard “sign up with your email here”. The provider is responsible because they picked their clients, rather than their clients picking them.
Nobody in the world DOES NOT do this. If an advertiser takes down their ads from a website because that website is spreading white supremacy then they are doing just the same. As they should.
Also where do they claim they are "just an infrastructure provider"? They clearly say throughout that they provide services for anti-racist/anti-sexist/etc orgs that can't afford to do it themselves.
They do not make a profit. They are not a company. They are literally a group of friends helping orgs out.
If the bartender decides as a rule "first of all, if they seem uncertain on their legs it is already a no", again that is just a codification of the former.
You might disagree: the fact that you mention the military "shooting back" when we're discussing a jet-engine being sabbotaged suggests that you believe a state is allowed to be / ought to be disproportionate in its violence towards its citizens.
That is in no way a good faith interpretation of what I said.
You trying to make the contents of the magazines scary by quoting the DOJ doesn't change the nature of the crime that got him 30 years.
And, to be clear, this box could have contained a signed confession and 30 years would have still been an extremely excessive punishment. People get shorter sentences for rape, manslaughter, and maming. Heck, some murder charges are shorter than 30 years.
To the original point, the crime was moving boxes. Hosting an exit node that transports a request deemed bad by the government is exactly the same thing. After all, it may be "insurrection plans".
If he was shot in the neck, why didn't the prosecution show a photo of the wound? Why are his neck and shoulder injuries a privacy concern?
What they proved is that shots were fired and that the officer involved was fine and walking around the scene after the shooting. When he said "I'm hit" another officer checked on video and said "your good your good your good".
Because you connect to the network, then start sending messages to everybody continuously, a message every second, or every ten seconds, or every 100 seconds, you will, every second, or every ten seconds, or 100 seconds, be able to send a message to whoever you want, and you will not be distinguished in any way from the other network participants, even if an adversary controls all nodes but that of the person you want to communicate with. Without dummy messages, traffic analysis will always be possible.
If they knowingly and deliberately assisted the PKK in a forbidden way, there would likely have been an Italian prosecution. Since this hasn't happened, it probably isn't true.
The illegality of the PKK in the Europe is also something quite complicated. The commission have declared it a terrorist organization, but here in Sweden such declaration have no judicial meaning and we define terrorism by whether the organization satisfies objective criteria defined in our law, which the courts determine from case to case (which in Sweden means that if you send money the PKK and prosecutor brings the case and argues that they're terrorist organization, and you argue badly, and he wins, then you might be convicted, but when another guy does the same thing, and argues well, he wins); and the situation in Belgium is similarly complicated, with a legal dispute about whether PKK was a terrorist organization, which PKK won, and thus the PKK was, in Belgium, declared by a court to not be a terrorist organization.
All I care about is the claim that if they can do this to A/I they'll come for Signal next. That doesn't follow.
I don't think that's true.
There are two possibilities: If you're proposing that dummy messages are in addition to normal messages, then dummy messages add noise to the signal, but over a long enough time, for known noise distribution, it is possible for the signal to be statistically significant. That depends on there being enough signal, but then things depend on signal traffic patterns, there are no guarantees.
The second possible design is that the node-to-node communication volumes for any pair of nodes is truly independent of the signal - i.e. the statistical model decides how much traffic flows from a node to another node, and that fixed amount of flow is either used for signal or for noise, and if there is more signal, it's dropped or waits. Encryption makes it impossible to distinguish signal from noise without the key known between the pair of nodes. That is secure against a passive adversary who doesn't participate in the network. However, if network users are anonymous and mutually untrusting, then the adversary can use active methods without much risk (i.e. lots of users and nodes can actually be the adversary). Every packet/message delayed or dropped also allows inference about network traffic by other users.
These methods can harden a network and make analysis harder, but they don't guarantee it is not possible.
If they were warned and did not listen, that was irresponsible of them due to the impact on other organizations. If they weren’t warned, the government was irresponsibly severe given the impact on legal speech and political activity. Hopefully a journalist can dig into the details beyond press releases, as I doubt that either side will offer an unbiased view.
I don’t like the radical left either, we usually just don’t get along, but they do have a right to communicate, speak, organize, and associate, just like other groups. (Yes, including the radical right, Communists, or other common boogeymen.) And they are free to choose services designed by and for political allies if they wish.
EDIT: a better simile would be if guns were giving away for free. You can see how that could be construed as increasing the responsibility of the provider if a receiver then does something illegal with it
There was also an art exhibition called 'The B-thing', before the attack: https://publicdelivery.org/gelitin-b-thing/
Then there are reports of FBI expelling from the USA some 100+ foreign art students after the attack.
There are a lot more dots to connect in this case, so it gets even easier but if people expect to be told the truth by a news anchor it can take 75+ years - that is the word we live in.
The neoconservative wing of the Republican Party had a hardon for war before the attack. What they couldn’t agree on was where… an invasion of Colombia under pretext of drugs, or something in the Middle East after the second intifada.
Once the planes hit, they could all agree where. South America was forgotten for a while.
Any direct connection to 24 would likely be tenuous, if only because (a) MIC propaganda is all over Hollywood even in peacetime, and (b) dark (i.e., on-camera physical interrogation) political thriller was already a high-selling genre in 2001.
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 CIA 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.
The actual conspiracy was the CIA told the Zero Dark Thirty producers that the Intel to find bin Laden came from torturing a detainee, which was a straight up lie (namely: under standard interrogation he provided the intelligence they needed...then they waterboarded him over 100 more times which provided absolutely nothing).
BTW someone should probably check in on moot once in a while to see if he’s ok lol. Strange bedfellows and all that.
Is it:
1) Right wingers
2) People who hate Jews and glorify Hitler
3) Governments who make laws requiring corporations to cooperate with the state
As a separate issue, sanctions are a blunt instrument, and frankly we are overusing them. They are quickly losing effectiveness and this is costing us credibility internationally. It’s also weakening the sanctions tool itself, leaving us with fewer options.
Despite the memes, the UK is not the 51st state, which is both why it was able to make the fine (1st Amendment doesn't have jurisdiction over the UK) and why it's not able to enforce it (the UK doesn't have jurisdiction over 4chan).
tpb.party
I'll repeat a few of similes I used, with this latest: somebody giving guns away for free would be /less/ responsible if he screened the receivers first; somebody serving drinks would be /less/ responsible if he checked the costumers first; somebody in possess of a hammer would be /less/ responsible if he lent it to known vetted people instead of just anyone...
I get it that some see that cases for the opposite exist, but I would need a strong example because those provided made me strengthen the view I advanced instead of seeing an acquired responsibility on those who select their customers.
If selling the weapons is "ok" because business must be allowed because the motive is purely selfish (I just want to make a living for myself and my family), and giving away weapons is "suspect" because "you clearly have an ulterior motive", if just means that we live in a world where selfishness is the norm being altruists is suspect.
I think this is the core divide of our society, much more useful than the obsolete "left" and "right" divide
If you have a real message, or a network maintenance message, that substitutes for a dummy message. You never send messages other than at the appointed time.
Delayed or dropped messages won't matter, since you only send a message at the appointed time. So the network is literally indistinguishable from one where you have sent no messages to all participants and to even someone with complete control of the network.
You have a list of peers, P1,...,PN, every second, at a specific pre-decided time, slightly fuzzed to avoid timing stuff, you send a message to each of them. If you don't put one in, it's a dummy message chosen at random and encrypted. But if you have a message, you send that at the appointed time.
Consequently, from the outside of the system, from the PoV of someone who does not have the keys, its behaviour is indistinguishable from a system where no one is sending any messagess at all.
Many EU governments care, because Turkey cares, but the problem is that Turkey's position that they're terrorists is legally iffy, so a lot of European courts disagree, and this creates a schizophrenic situation where politicians hold that they're terrorist and will claim that it's the government position, while the actual government position in the courts is that they mostly aren't and that it's a case-by-case question.
> On October 23, 2001, U.S. representative Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) introduced House bill H.R. 3162, which incorporated provisions from a previously-sponsored House bill, and a Senate bill introduced earlier in the month.[5] The next day, October 24, the Act passed the House by a vote of 357–66,[6] with Democrats comprising the overwhelming majority of "no"-votes.
> The bill, which removed most of the changes from the Senate version, passed Congress on March 2, 2006, and was signed by President Bush on March 9 and 10 of that year.
This is something Biden was proud of, and confirmed in his own words many times
https://www.c-span.org/clip/senate-committee/user-clip-joe-b...
The surveillance state has bipartisan support.
> This is simply armed conflict.
Armed conflict by residents and citizens against the state is usually a serious criminal offense everywhere.
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.
Israelis and others who support this have shown that the lesson they took from the Holocaust is that they believe it's morally fine as long as they're the ones doing the killing.
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.
"Any kind" is quite the load bearing argument there. Let me remind you Europe is under an ongoing land invasion, which is why fucking with its defensive capabilities is unlikely to solicit much sympathies.
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?
Corrections welcome if I am wrong.
That would be a lot worse for them than sanctions.
I hope no one takes this seriously.
If you're caught sabotaging equipment on a US military installation in many cases they are authorized to use deadly force and you'll be held accountable under the UCMJ. The absolute best outcome is you're designated a terrorist and live to see a prison cell.
Attacking military targets is somewhere between an insurgency, partisanism, or an armed conflict.
If we let terrorism mean “any act against the state”, then people who burn police cars are the same as people who plant bombs in shopping malls.
Not consistently, and its not a clear definition.
The same groups that attacked civilians in places I have lived in also attacked military targets as part of the same strategy. Terrorism is used to threaten, divert resources from front lines, cause economic damage, etc. Civilian targets are attacked in most wars. Is a car bomb outside a military barracks that different from one in a civilian area? What about a suicide bomb aimed at a sentry on a civilian road? I was about to drive past that one. Are the civilians who were killed collateral damage from an attack on a military target or victims of terrorism?
> people who burn police cars
So people who attack a civilian target. By your own definition they are terrorists if they are doing it for political motives.
It's a matter of enforcement. And who would want to enforce 1st amendment?
The entirety of the US constitution carries zero weight to the court system of the nation that the founders of those United States, ahem, engaged in unlawful violent treason against, with the assistance of foreign powers (France, then Spain and the Dutch Republic). :P
If the same group attacks civilian and military targets then the civilian targets are terrorism and the military targets are not.
Which is typically called „arresting“ when a government does it to their own citizens…
> you are not allowed to murder unarmed soldiers,
That's also false, you can absolutely kill unarmed combatants so long as they remain combatants. Eg you can bomb an artillery crew even if they don't have sidearms.
To be eligible for capture, a combatant must generally surrender.
> typically called „arresting“ when a government does it to their own citizens
I encourage you to read up on POW camps. There are no attorneys or rights. You may work POWs. There are cases in which food and medical aid can be severely limited depending on how it is sourced. You may hold POWs functionally forever.
POWs don’t have attorneys, but they do have rights. Limiting food and medical aid is a war crime.
Of course, everybody routinely violates the rights of POWs, and only the losers ever get prosecuted.
And no, limiting food and medical is not a war crime if the source being limited is from the captor and matches the treatment of their own troops.
Laying down your arms is generally considered an expression of surrender and renders protection.
Also, who sends scouts unarmed? They should at least have a sidearm.
And it was a hypothetical, there are a lot of situations where you can kill unarmed military personnel legally.
You can just bomb military barracks full of sleeping unarmed people legally for example.