If they believe A/I broke the law they should contact the Italian government and do a joint investigation with the FBI that will lead to actual terrorism charges in court. Doing it this way just proves they have no ground to stand on.
It was both. The Treasury went the OFAC route while the State Department designated them a terrorist:
https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sb0616/
https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/20...
US sanctions Italian hosting provider Autistici Inventati
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49451343
US Government designates host of noblogs.org a "global terrorist"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49464391
A Statement by A/I Collective About US Sanctions
> Q: Why have we reached this point?
Their answer: Russia.
Uh no. How about American proto-fascism.
The US is largely responsible for the Internet (and for the original internet protocols). The Internet is a corporation (ICANN), run by corporations, for the benefit of... corporations. I suppose the Hudsons Bay Company was a fascist state, in effect.
Here we are talking about an organization offering services on the Internet. The Internet is a cesspool. (Put some machine on the Internet: FAFO.) There have now been numerous cases where particularly bad actors have been de-peered. It's starts with muh defending the innocents, then muh rights, then the de-peering starts to bite, and then... they disappear. I will quote Paul Vixie: if you can't defend it, you don't own it.
Neither does ICANN, or the US government. But like any other entity with access to the Internet they can exert influence on providers, it's not like there is no precedent for governments making up stupid shit and expecting the Internet to enforce it for them. Private entities make up shit too, for instance all of the SPAM fighting ecosystem is largely private players making sure that "bad domains get what they deserve", and they decide the definition of "bad" (and they don't agree) as well as what they deserve.
ICANN for instance is really protective of DNS. Find me a publicly distributed DNS server (in the mode of BIND, Knot, Unbound) which supports multiple root views; nay, find me a such a nameserver which supports any additional roots in a graceful fashion. QED: systemic fascisim. ;-) Most would say that's not a bad thing, if you want to have alternate roots, then you need to keep your tree completely separate. There will be people who disagree.
Not enough background in the article or the State Dept press release for me to comment on exactly what influence they're trying to exert on a technical level. How is it different from various countries sanctioning other countries' politicians, or differences between the EU and US on internet governance? How is it actually enforceable? Or California passing an "operating systems must attest user age" law? Do people in Italy give a shit about that? I'd be surprised if they did.