The Trump Administration designates the Italian collective Autistici/Inventati as a global terrorist

The Trump Administration has just designated as global terrorist an Italian group that offers electronic communication services: web hosting and domains, email, mailing lists and a blogging platform. They are called Autistici/Inventati (A/I) and, unlike the Google/Meta/Apple/Microsoft/etc. ecosystem, they do not do telemetry or user profiling, nor do they record their metadata to know where they are at all times or who their friends are. Their algorithms don't predict the perfect time to raise the price of health insurance after your child's cancer, nor do they interpret signs of budding alcoholism and a contentious divorce as the perfect backdrop for a dark immigration campaign. They do not even read his political comments in the family chat nor save his wife's calendar of union activities to label him as a conflictive person in the labor market. The service is designed to protect the user's identity and activity. Everything is encrypted and they have no key to decrypt it, even if a judge asks for it.

The service is very artisanal. Applications are evaluated individually to accommodate only those who truly need it: activists, leakers, independent researchers, lawyers and other likely targets of repressive governments. Once the account is awarded, all your data is destroyed. A/I does not charge for its services nor does it receive state aid to pay for exclusive servers within the EU and other countries within the legal framework of the Data Protection Regulation. It is financed entirely by donations. The Trump Administration accuses them of association with “Antifa cells and other violent far-left groups,” implying two interesting things.

First, it suggests without proving that A/I has been instrumental in attacks against infrastructure linked to the technology sector in Europe, such as the attack on the Tesla gigafactory in Germany or the sabotage of the Transalpine Pipeline. Second, it implies that these sabotages are the European equivalent of other American movements against the criminalization of abortion and the destruction of forests, independent media such as an anarchist radio program in North Carolina, or the Seattle Anarchist Book Fair.

The legal basis is an Executive Order signed by George W. Bush 12 days after the September 11 attacks. It is called Blocking of assets and prohibition of transactions with people who commit, threaten to commit or support terrorism. It is designed to cut off the financing and economic infrastructure of international terrorism, and allows for the prosecution of anyone who provides “material assistance, sponsored or provided financial, material or technological support” to an act of terrorism. According to the Administration, that includes publishing blogs like Jane's Revenge, against abortion restrictions, which was born after the leak of the ruling that undid Roe v. Wade. Or Defend the Atlanta Forest, the blog of the Stop Cop City movement against the construction of a training center for the Atlanta police that would destroy an important forest in the city. Or that of the Portland anti-fascist group that spread the names of ICE agents.