On August 26, 2026, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, through OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control – the authority responsible for managing and enforcing economic and financial sanctions) sanctioned Autistici/Inventati (A/I), an Italian collective that has been providing digital infrastructure – email, hosting, mailing lists, chat, videoconferencing, streaming, and services related to privacy and anonymity – to movements and activists since 2001. Washington designated it as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT), alleging that it has provided financial, material or technological support to terrorism and to organizations already subjected to sanctions. A/I rejects the allegations and declares that its activities consist in providing tools for digital self-defence and infrastructure for the freedom of communication.
On August 28 the autistici.org web domain was found to be unreachable. The collective attributed the problem to the DNS level and to the .org domain registry, Public Interest Registry (PIR). This technical point is important: it does not necessarily mean that the server was shut down; a domain can be made unreachable by preventing the normal DNS publication or resolution. Technical findings indicated a serverHold status for the domain (see below, “10. The blocking of autistici.org: facts and attributions”). The exact cause and the formal chain of decision-making must be however distinguished from the collective’s inferences: there is no public statement from PIR explicitly saying that it acted on OFAC’s orders.
Exactly! Privacy is a human right and as other human rights they apply universally. Just because far righters use toilets doesnt mean everyone should be shitting in bushes.