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U.S. sanctions against the A/I Collective

inventati.org

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Re: U.S. sanctions against the A/I Collective

#601

Post by inigyou »

drak0n1c wrote: post #360
RajuChacha108 wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly EU India and China need to take a tougher stand here or see themselves getting harassed in future.

You may be unaware, but the EU, India, and China have also engaged in their own versions of economically-pressured internet presence takedowns of international activists and dissidents they label subversive. The degree differs according to leverage and their constitutional reasoning, but there is no spirit of opposition to this type of policy if that’s what you’re imagining.

Yep. People have had their homes raided in Germany for hosting online content about the Israeli genocide of Palestine. You don't get any warning - the police just show up and take all electronic devices, no exceptions.

Re: U.S. sanctions against the A/I Collective

#602

Post by inigyou »

jijijijij wrote: post #285
dpc050505 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monero 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.

This 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…

They can potentially play a cat and mouse game for a while, if none of the transactions actually say "For Signal" on them

Re: U.S. sanctions against the A/I Collective

#603

Post by inigyou »

LastTrain wrote: post #335
logological wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This 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 registra…

The anti-spam community can’t throw you in jail or fine you.

It 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.

Re: U.S. sanctions against the A/I Collective

#604

Post by otterley »

iamnothere wrote: post #594
otterley wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'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…

What 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…

It’s all about mens rea. The law distinguishes between people who provide services to anyone, and people who intentionally market their service to criminals, even under coded language. In this case the provider didn’t just allegedly market themselves to them; they also actually excluded others.

Re: U.S. sanctions against the A/I Collective

#605

Post by inigyou »

AnonC wrote: post #213
tptacek wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If 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.

But Signal requires a working phone number for registration and it knows the phone number. The backend could be modified at any time to store this somewhere else while maintaining end to end encryption between the two parties communicating on it. How can Signal prove continuously that it doesn’t store or disseminate the phone number? I know in past precedent it has told courts that it only has very limited informatio…

I don't understand what you mean by all this. Obviously your phone number is tied to your Signal account and Signal knows that linkage at all times - no special action is necessary for them to know it. Signal does not provide anonymity beyond what a phone number provides, and isn't designed to.

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.

Re: U.S. sanctions against the A/I Collective

#606

Post by inigyou »

impossiblefork wrote: post #432
tptacek wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If 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.

Signal will allow traffic analysis. You send the message to signal, if they wish they can write down to whom they send it on. It is impossible to make a secure system without the continuous transmission of dummy messages to large numbers of users.

They don't have to do that because accounts are associated one-to-one with phone numbers.

Re: U.S. sanctions against the A/I Collective

#607

Post by nailer »

Fraterkes wrote: post #437
graemep wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Palestine Action has been designated a terrorist group in the UK as well after sabotaging military aircraft (the article says they sprayed paint, but does not say it was sprayed inside jet engines, rendering them inoperable). Masar Badil supports "armed struggle". One of the other groups ("hammer") recently designated a terrorist group (and linked to A/I Collective in another article I read ) got its name by attackin…

Here's my "nuanced" take: If a pro-zionist group were officialy designated as terrorists for spraying paint into a jet-engine I would find that ridiculous too.

PA hit a police officer in the back with a sledgehammer.

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.

Re: U.S. sanctions against the A/I Collective

#609

Post by inigyou »

tptacek wrote: post #374
jijijijij wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's based on three designated foreign terrorist organizations, notably the PKK. 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…

It's neither an explanation nor a tautology; it's an element of US law.

It was clearly written as an explanation. The alternative is that you didn't intend for the words you wrote to have any meaning, in which case why did you write them?
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