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Autistici/Inventati shuts down

#Autistici/inventati#Italy#Banca Etica#OFAC#Digital Sovereignty#AI translated

On September 6, 2026 Autistici/Inventati (A/I) announced on their website and blog the cessation of operations, but let's start in order: On August 26, 2026 the US Department of the Treasury, through OFAC (the sector that manages and applies economic and financial sanctions), sanctioned Autistici/Inventati, an Italian collective that since 2001 has been providing digital infrastructures to movements and activists. Designated as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) the collective has been accused of providing financial, material or technological support to terrorism and to already sanctioned organizations.

Now, without getting into the merits of whether A/I's actions and the consequent decisions of the United States government were right or wrong the question we must ask ourselves is how much this really impacted the collective and with what authority, because the collective is based in Italy and answers to Italian and European Union laws. An order of this kind, moreover from the executive and not even from an American judge, should not have any power in Europe, and in fact on a legal level A/I risks nothing (for now) but the problem arrives on the concept of secondary sanctions, when one is inserted in these blacklists all companies have a deadline, in this case September 25, to cease all relations with the designated subject otherwise they risk heavy sanctions. How does this touch an Italian activist collective? Simple: the US administration knows that no European judge would ever accept their accusations on A/I therefore it acts on what falls under its direct jurisdiction. The first to be hit were the autistici.org domains and the mail services that having a .org domain fall under the jurisdiction of the Public Interest Registry (PIR) which located in Virginia immediately blocked the DNS resolution of the address, in a cascade in the following days the self-financing channels also failed from PayPal to Banca Etica which represents perhaps the most interesting case.

To understand why an Italian bank that defines itself as "ethical" bends before a document that has zero legal value in Europe we must return to understand how the infrastructure and OFAC's secondary sanctions work, the bank is indeed in Italian territory and subject to Italian and European legislation but if the US authorities were to find it entertaining relationships with a subject inserted in the SDGT list then the secondary sanctions would trigger which would force all American mediators and suppliers to cease their relationships with Banca Etica, ergo the main US card circuits (Visa, Mastercard, American Express) and the correspondent banks for transactions in dollars would cut the institution out of international channels with heavy repercussions for all the other account holders: a scenario that would undermine the very existence of the institution. While finding itself forced to give in, Banca Etica has expressed its discontent asking the European institutions to clarify a protocol for banking institutions or companies that might find themselves in similar situations.

To return to the opening paragraph, after 12 days from the US government's announcement the collective decided to cease its online activities because the risks for the managers and the users and the logistics of what remains a volunteer operation based on user donations have become a burden that is no longer sustainable.

There are some speculations that can be made behind the choice; I have identified at least three:

  1. A concrete and unsustainable paralysis in the daily management of the infrastructure.
  2. The desire to send a message now that they are on everyone's lips putting the focus on the collective never convicted neither by an American nor European court forced to close for the absence of European policies for the safeguard from these cases.
  3. The formal cessation of Autistici/Inventati to be reborn as a new entity not on the SDGT lists and, hopefully, this time with a more Eurocentric infrastructure (already with a .it or .eu domain the site probably would not have gone offline) to avoid the unjustified chain disruptions of the US operations.