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Open Letter: Communications Infrastructure Is Not Terrorism
Defend Autistici/Inventati and the right to build resistant communication

On August 26, 2026, the United States designated the Italian volunteer technology collective Autistici/Inventati as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist and placed it on the Specially Designated Nationals list under Executive Order 13224. A temporary authorization covering certain wind-down transactions ends at 12:01 a.m. Eastern on September 25.

Autistici/Inventati has provided noncommercial email, websites, mailing lists, Noblogs and other communications services since 2001. It emerged from Italian hacklabs, autonomous media and social movements. Its infrastructure was built in response to censorship, covert surveillance and server seizures. It minimizes identifying data, uses distributed systems and treats privacy as a condition of political participation rather than a product.

The United States' public announcements point to material and organizations that allegedly used A/I infrastructure. They do not publicly show that A/I planned the cited actions, selected targets, directed users or authored hosted material. The designation therefore raises a question extending far beyond one collective: can maintaining privacy-preserving communications infrastructure for disfavored movements itself be treated as terrorism?

That theory threatens independent hosts, encrypted communications services, radical libraries, movement archives, publishers and small volunteer projects everywhere. It invites banks, registrars, hosting companies and technology providers to sever relationships first and ask legal questions later. It turns data minimization into suspicion, privacy into concealment and infrastructure into guilt by association.

Large commercial platforms are ordinarily distinguished from the speech and conduct of their users through intermediary-liability principles, including Section 230 in the United States. Those protections are not absolute and do not override sanctions law. That is precisely why this designation is so consequential: executive sanctions power can impose economic isolation without resolving the ordinary question of whether a provider is legally responsible for third-party material in court.

Autistici/Inventati is not politically neutral, and neither are many of the publications, libraries, unions and civil-liberties organizations that may sign this letter. Political affinity, however, is not operational control. Providing an email account, publishing platform or server is not the same act as planning everything a user may later say or do.
We therefore call for:

The immediate revocation or prompt, transparent review of the designation, with publication of the factual and legal basis sufficient for meaningful public scrutiny and challenge.

A clear distinction between providing communications infrastructure and directing the conduct of its users. Privacy, encryption, pseudonymity and refusal to retain unnecessary identifying data must not be treated as evidence of terrorism.

Protection for independent reporting, research, archiving and public advocacy. Journalists, libraries, researchers and community archivists must be able to document this history without being treated as extensions of a designated entity.

Resistance to institutional over-compliance. Banks, registrars, hosts, certificate providers and technology companies should disclose relevant restrictions, provide notice where lawful and avoid suppressing material or relationships beyond what the law actually requires.

A public response from digital-rights, free-expression and civil-liberties institutions. The targeting of autonomous infrastructure cannot be allowed to become a precedent through silence.
We do not ask every signer to endorse every A/I user, publication or political position. We ask signers to defend a foundational distinction: communications infrastructure is not identical to the speech or conduct transmitted through it.

The purpose of economic designation is isolation. Our answer is independent, informed and disciplined solidarity: preserve the public record, examine the government's claims, resist over-compliance and defend the ability of movements to communicate without surrendering themselves to corporate or state surveillance.

Signed,
Sabot Media  
We Will Free Us  
Dirty Hands Collective - CO
BASH - Boise Autonomous Solidarity Hub - ID
Chehalis River Mutual Aid Network - WA
The Blackflower Collective - WA
[FOUNDING ORGANIZATIONAL SIGNATORIES]

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Independence disclosure
This letter is an independent initiative of Sabot Media and We Will Free Us. The publishers and signatories do not represent, speak for, coordinate with or claim affiliation with Autistici/Inventati.