Overview
- The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control placed Autistici/Inventati on an antiterrorism sanctions list on August 26, and the collective said it suspended services on Sunday, September 6 after its autistici.org domain was taken down and its PayPal account was blocked.
- Autistici/Inventati says it closed to protect users and communities from possible criminal or financial exposure caused by the U.S. designation.
- The collective ran privacy-focused email, blog and hosting services for about 25 years and supported thousands of accounts, with reporting citing roughly 16,000 email boxes, 10,000 blogs and 7,000 websites on its platforms.
- Practical effects reported since the designation include payment blocking and at least one bank, Banca Etica, closing the group’s account, and there appear to be limited legal remedies because parts of the U.S. case may be secret.
- Civil libertarians and commentators say the move follows a pattern of U.S. actions against left-wing groups and could chill independent privacy tools for activists, while A/I says it will soon publish instructions to help users back up their content before further technical problems arrive.