45 comments

  • john_strinlai 21 minutes ago

    >A/I’s cadre of radical hackers and tech developers provide a full spectrum of services – including encrypted chats and email, web hosting, secure video conferencing and streaming, anonymity shields, and a suite of other technological tools [...] while remaining anonymous, untraceable, and beyond the reach of the law.

    ignoring the political leanings, this type of rhetoric will certainly be used to further the campaign against encryption, bolster the case for id verification requirements, etc. it paints the use of everyday normal tools: email, web hosting, etc. as inherently bad if they are private.

      Saline9515 10 minutes ago

      A/I mails weren't e2e encrypted.

  • NDlurker 16 minutes ago

    >Rose City Antifa also used A/I Collective tools and services to disseminate doxing lists and release illegally obtained personal information of Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement, along with calls for targeted attacks on ICE agents in the streets and “in their homes.”

    That's what DHS does. They dish it out but can't handle it when it's done to them. Cowards.

  • impossiblefork 28 minutes ago

    Very strange to decide to only supply a communications system to people ideologically aligned with one. That seems like it would make one stand out to an undesirable degree, and it makes me wonder whether these groups actually do this, or whether they're setting others up. If this is correct I almost whether they're going after something set up by the Italian government.

    Still, it seems like this would likely to be protected under the US first amendment, and it would probably be reasonable to bring legal action in the US to avoid silly stuff happening in Europe, when this in inevitably used to send goons and annoying infiltrators across the sea to Italy and Europe.

      iamnothere 26 minutes ago

      It’s fairly common, given the presence of Disroot and Riseup. The problem for political groups is that they can’t necessarily trust non-aligned hosts not to betray them. A warrant is one thing, you have to comply regardless, but non-aligned hosts may hand over data upon request even if there is no warrant.

        impossiblefork 14 minutes ago

        Yeah, but it is possible to make distributed systems.

        I've written up a little toy in Erlang where you have lots of connections to peers and send dummy messages, all of the same size, to all your peers continuously and then, because of this, you can obviously send a message to whoever you like without anyone being able to know to whom you sent it. With a bit of extra delay you can add retransmission, and then you can have huge networks. Complete resistance to traffic analysis.

        The only thing you need to accept to have this kind of security is to accept that message timing might be 1/s, or 0.1/s, but for things like e-mail that isn't a problem at all.

        My system is not done. I had intended to finish it if ChatControl 2.0 passed, but since it didn't, and there's upon that a war on I didn't put it out, and I thought it was a bad idea to popularize this kind of thing since there was a war on, but it's quite straightforward. Many here could probably write something like it.

          iamnothere 10 minutes ago

          There are plenty of P2P and anonymous collaboration tools out there, but the problem for these groups is that members will use insecure tools unless they are as convenient and capable as what they are used to. This is the same reason that the government constantly screws up its own opsec. Nontechnical people in any group are a serious problem for maintaining security.

          (This is also why law enforcement concerns about encryption are overblown.)

            impossiblefork 8 minutes ago

            Yes, but then you have to accept that they can't be part of a group that needs security.

            If they aren't willing to do things correctly, not be lazy etc., and you tell them that this means that adversaries will be able to pinpoint them, and pinpoint you and everybody else, and they don't express that they're going to take the effort to be reasonable, then maybe you shouldn't talk to them.

  • dools 18 minutes ago

    Every announcement from these psychos reads like a missive from the Ministry of Peace

  • sybercecurity an hour ago

    Declaring a group of "hackers" as global terrorists? Mark off that spot on your Cyberpunk Dystopia Bingo cards.

  • iamnothere 28 minutes ago

    Well this is concerning, hopefully they aren’t planning to go after Disroot and Riseup as well. The ability to access secure hosting shouldn’t depend on political orientation.

  • turcogutierrez 30 minutes ago

    Where's "antifa" headquarters, exactly? Who's their leader? And who's 2nd in command?

      steve1977 20 minutes ago

      That always reminds me of a graffiti I saw once, which simply commanded "Anarchy!"... the irony of which got a bit lost on the artist I think...

        avaer 7 minutes ago

        That doesn't seem ironic at all. It would be ironic if "Anarchy!" had an HQ.

      jayGlow 19 minutes ago

      having a hierarchy like that would make the group easier to deal with. similar groups use cell structures or leaderless approaches. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaderless_resistance

      kjksf 15 minutes ago

      Where are "Nazi" headquarters? Who's their leader? And who's 2nd in command?

      Maybe an ideology doesn't need headquarters or a leader.

        compass_copium 9 minutes ago

        "Antifa" is not being presented as an ideology, it is being portrayed as a global terror cell. The specific purpose for this is to be able criminalize leftist politics, since the state has many more tools to prevent association with foreign groups.

        "Nazi" does not have a leader, but the Nazi party had a leader. Atomwaffen had a leader. Various III% groups have leaders. Strangely, these groups are not being linked to foreign right-wing groups in an attempt to make them illegal.

      GaryBluto 16 minutes ago

      Where is the Neo-Nazi headquarters, exactly? Who's their leader? And who's second in command? Surely if there's no designated single headquarters they aren't a problem.

        compass_copium 5 minutes ago

        Copy-pasting my comment to the other poster making the same point:

        "Antifa" is not being presented as an ideology, it is being portrayed as a global terror cell. The specific purpose for this is to be able criminalize leftist politics, since the state has many more tools to prevent association with foreign groups.

        "Nazi" does not have a leader, but the Nazi party had a leader. Atomwaffen had a leader. Various III% groups have leaders. Strangely, these groups are not being linked to foreign right-wing groups in an attempt to make them illegal.

      Saline9515 18 minutes ago

      An organization doesn't have to be centralized, just like communists weren't. This is a lazy argument.

        compass_copium 6 minutes ago

        There was a national Communist Party as well as several Cominterns. Communists are pretty big on democratic centralism.

  • xrd 32 minutes ago

    Rose City Antifa: Oregon gets a shout out. Seriously.

  • ChrisArchitect 6 minutes ago

    Related:

    US sanctions Italian hosting provider for encrypted email to Antifa and PKK

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49451343

  • superkuh 31 minutes ago

    The 2001 AUMF (authorization of us of military force) needs to be repealed so that these "special designations" are no longer allowed and war has to be declared. The US federal government will still perform the same acts but at least after the 2001 AUMF is repealed they'll have to go back to secret assassinations. Instead of flouting it in semi-public with the executive disposition matrix system.

  • freitasm 38 minutes ago

    Of course the fascists in power have a problem with real freedom.

      Saline9515 16 minutes ago

      Freedom to sabotage rail systems that are the property of the people and actually managed by communist unions? Come on?

        compass_copium 4 minutes ago

        A/I collective is not being accused of that, but of hosting information and providing communications services.

  • mjhay 29 minutes ago

    Beyond parody

  • kelseyfrog 39 minutes ago

    Why can't capitalism be judged on its own merits? Why do we need the state to get involved in shaping hegemony?

      deepfriedchokes 29 minutes ago

      You know the answer. There’s a reason the state considers antifa a threat.

      skeledrew 23 minutes ago

      Capitalism "needs to win", but there's no way it can without being ruthlessly forced upon people. Heck even forcing it is just delaying the inevitable decline/crash.

        ethagnawl 3 minutes ago

        Certain elements of Capitalism (cough AI) seem to simultaneously be speedrunning its decline and keeping it on life support. What strange times we find ourselves in.

      Saline9515 16 minutes ago

      I think that we had had enough time to judge communism on its own merits. Why do you want to try again?

        kelseyfrog 7 minutes ago

        Let's stick to the topic please. Don't dilute the investigation with random detours.

      antonvs 28 minutes ago

      Capitalism has been judged on its own merits, and been found to be a ridiculously simplistic, unworkable system that tends toward oligarchy, massive inequality, and authoritarianism.

      The state needs to get involved to protect the unworkable system.

        fodkodrasz 12 minutes ago

        Maybe you are right, at least partially, I can identify many of its flaws myself. However for example my homeland has tried communism/socialism, and went through brief periods of anarchy, and the same can be told about all. My family has lost a lot to all of these experiments (including the current capitalist one), but stability and modest prosperity are the best, and anarchism is as far from that as it gets, especially as represented by the Antifa.

        Even the communist regime persecuted anarchism. (though they supported it when it was not at home, as a destabilizing tool)

        matkoniecz 20 minutes ago

        Worth noting that at scale larger than family/clan/tribe it beats communism and feudalism on all relevant - to people - metrics.

        (though unconstrained capitalism is not ideal)

        > unworkable system

        ? unconstrained pure capitalism has bad effects, but it is not unworkable unlike say pure communism applied at scale larger than a family

  • totallygeeky 38 minutes ago

    Wish they would pay this sort of attention to the violent right-wing groups in the US, but of course that would put too many cops and ICE agents in prison for their liking.

    Anyway, wouldn't be a day ending in -y if this presidency wasn't yelling about "far-left terrorists".

      mcmcmc 28 minutes ago

      They pay plenty of attention, that’s their recruiting pool

      rootsudo 30 minutes ago

      In two years and 2 months regime change will swing it back.

        ranger_danger 19 minutes ago

        And then it will swing back again... some say the two-party system is simply broken

        jackb4040 24 minutes ago

        And the culture of hacker news will follow suit, woke 3.0

  • mdb333 an hour ago

    Siamo tutti antifascisti!

      davidw 7 minutes ago

      Not in the tech industry, apparently. As a 50 year old, it's really shocking to see what I thought were just solid, solid underpinnings of a modern liberal society like "white nationalists are bad and should be ostracized" eroding.