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Press Release – August 28, 2026

1. In brief

On August 26, 2026, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, through OFAC - the bureau that manages and enforces economic and financial sanctions -, sanctioned Autistici/Inventati (A/I), an Italian collective that since 2001 has provided digital infrastructure to movements and activists: email, hosting, mailing lists, chat, videoconferencing, streaming, and services related to privacy and anonymity. Washington designated it as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT), claiming that it provided financial, material or technological support to terrorism and to organizations already under sanctions. A/I rejects the accusations and maintains that its work consists of providing tools for digital self-defense and infrastructure for the freedom of communication.

On August 28 the domain autistici.org was found to be not normally reachable. The collective attributed the problem to the DNS level and to the .org domain registry, Public Interest Registry (PIR). The technical point is important: it does not necessarily mean that the server was shut down; a domain can be made unreachable by preventing the normal publication/resolution of its DNS. Technical observations indicated that the domain was in serverHold status (see below, “10. The blocking of autistici.org: facts and attributions”). The exact cause and the formal chain of decision must however be distinguished from the collective’s inferences: there is no public statement from PIR explicitly saying that it acted on OFAC’s orders.

2. Who Autistici/Inventati are

Autistici/Inventati was born in Italy in March 2001 from the meeting of people and collectives active in technology, privacy, digital rights, and political activism. The collective offers free infrastructure as an alternative to the big commercial platforms. A/I presents itself as an antifascist, antiracist, antisexist, and antimilitarist organization, opposed to capitalism and to authoritarianism, and selects the projects it hosts on the basis of their compatibility with these principles.

The infrastructure is managed through a formally recognized association. This means that A/I does not operate as an informal group: its activity runs through an associative form governed by the legal system, with legal responsibilities, contractual relationships, and the related obligations and oversight.

Over the years, the infrastructure and services offered by the Association have been the subject of investigations and interventions by the authorities, even in events with an international dimension, including the seizure, in the years 2004 and 2005, of servers hosted by a commercial supplier in the context of an investigation by the Prosecutor of Bologna, as well as subsequent disputes relating to individual content or accounts. In all these events, the association and its managers have been fully acquitted by accusations arising from the use by third parties of the servers or services provided and, in any case, have shown that they have always fully and correctly fulfilled the legal obligations in relation to the digital services offered. In a dispute relating to a satirical site hosted by the Court of Milan, the Court of Milan ruled to protect satire, thus demonstrating in addition to the extraneity of the association with the content hosted also the full legitimacy of the same. Such proceedings took place through ordinary judicial instruments and in no case the Italian authorities qualified the association as a terrorist organization.

3. What the United States decided

On August 26, OFAC placed Autistici/Inventati on the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List with the SDGT designation. The legal basis is Executive Order 13224, issued in 2001 and subsequently amended, which allows targeting also those who, according to the US administration, provide material, financial or technological support to terrorist activities.

The SDGT designation should not be confused with the Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) category. It is above all a sanctions designation: assets and property interests subject to US jurisdiction are blocked, and persons holding US citizenship are generally prohibited from transacting with the designated party, subject to OFAC authorization.

4. What Washington accuses A/I of

According to the US Treasury, A/I provides digital architecture, tools, and services to “violent Antifa cells” and to other left-wing extremists. The communiqué cites hosting, encrypted email, chat and videoconferencing, streaming, and the architecture associated with Noblogs. Washington further claims that the infrastructure was made available to organizations already under sanctions, expressly naming the PKK.

The logic of the accusation is therefore not simply “A/I carried out an attack”. The point is what is called material support: according to Washington, the technological infrastructure constitutes a means of support for subjects or activities qualified as terrorist.

The disputed point is therefore less trivial than the formula “carried out terrorist acts” suggests: the accusation concerns the role of the infrastructure and of the services provided to users. In this perspective, the question becomes to what extent the provision of technological services — email, hosting, chat, streaming, or other communication tools — can be considered material support to a subject qualified as terrorist.

OFAC further maintains that the sanctions do not target the mere protected political expression, but support for conduct falling within the definition of terrorism in Executive Order 13224.

5. The collective’s response

A/I categorically rejects the US qualification. The collective describes itself as composed of volunteers and digital activists and claims the provision of digital self-defense tools for activists, individuals, groups, and associations.

6. OFAC explained in simple terms

The SDN List is the list of designated parties. In A/I’s case the acronym SDGT stands for Specially Designated Global Terrorist: it is a US sanctions designation, distinct from the Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) category, but with concrete economic consequences. The OFAC entry file on A/I also carries the indication “Secondary sanctions risk”.

The strength of this system does not derive solely from the fact that the United States can block assets in the US. The weight of the financial system, of the dollar, and of US companies can produce indirect effects abroad as well: banks, platforms, and providers may sever relationships to avoid compliance risk. This is the phenomenon often described as de-risking.

7. Why the sanction can have effects outside the US

The US designation does not automatically amount to a ban on A/I in Italy or in the European Union. The US, the EU, and individual states have distinct legal systems and antiterrorism lists. Inclusion on the OFAC list does however produce strong pressure on the operators that have dealings with the designated party.

OFAC has also issued General License 36, which authorizes the wind down of certain operations involving A/I until September 25, 2026. In this context, wind down means the possibility of closing or orderly winding up pre-existing relationships and operations with the sanctioned party within a time window set by OFAC. It is therefore not authorization to maintain the relationships indefinitely, but an exit window. It is important to distinguish between the period granted for the wind down, any applicable legal obligations, and the autonomous decisions of operators who choose to sever the relationship earlier.

8. August 28: what happened to the DNS

When a user types autistici.org in the browser, the computer must know which IP address to connect to. The DNS (Domain Name System) performs this function: it translates a readable name, such as autistici.org, into the server’s numerical address.

Simplified scheme: user → DNS → IP address → server → site.

If the DNS stops returning the correct mapping, the server may remain powered on but the site becomes unreachable for the users of the domain.

It is therefore important not to confuse “shutting down the server” with “disconnecting or suspending the domain”. The second intervention hits a different level of the hosting infrastructure.

9. ICANN, PIR, registrar and servers: who does what

Scheme: ICANN → coordinates the system; PIR → manages .org; registrar → administers the domain registration; servers/hosting → hosts the content. For this reason, PIR should not be described as the provider that “hosts” A/I’s site.

10. The blocking of autistici.org: facts and attributions

Technical observations indicated that the domain was in serverHold status, a status that normally prevents the normal publication of the domain in the DNS. The technical datum documents the state of the domain, but on its own it does not prove who decided the intervention or for what reason.

The domain was rendered not normally resolvable and A/I believes that the intervention can be attributed to PIR. At present there is no public statement from PIR specifically explaining the case or confirming that the intervention was carried out on OFAC’s direct order.

11. Why the DNS is the most important point in the story

The case shows that a digital infrastructure can be struck at different levels. It is not necessarily necessary to seize the server that contains the data: one can intervene on the name that allows it to be found. In this sense the domain becomes a point of control.

The central question therefore becomes: what happens when an Italian collective, its servers, and its users are formally outside US jurisdiction, but use a .org domain managed by a US registry and financial or technological services connected to the US market?

12. Banca Etica: the sanction reaches the Italian account too

The consequences of the US designation do not concern only the Internet. According to Autistici/Inventati’s own account and to what is reported in the press, Banca Etica would have communicated to the collective its intention to close the banking relationship following A/I’s placement on the OFAC list. This is a significant turn, because it shows how a decision taken by a US authority can produce concrete consequences even in the financial relationships of an Italian organization.

It is important, however, not to describe the story as if the American government had directly ordered Banca Etica to close the account. The mechanism is more complex. Inclusion on the OFAC list exposes the sanctioned party to a set of restrictions, and in the case of Autistici/Inventati the US measure also signals a risk of secondary sanctions. For a bank or another financial intermediary this can translate into a compliance problem: continuing to maintain relationships with the sanctioned party can be considered too risky from a legal, financial, or reputational point of view.

This is the so-called de-risking: an intermediary may choose to sever a relationship not necessarily because an Italian rule automatically compels it to, but because it wants to avoid exposure to the risks arising from the US sanctions system. In this sense, an OFAC sanction can produce effects far beyond American jurisdiction without any direct order addressed to the individual bank being necessary.

The case is particularly interesting because it concerns Banca Etica, an institution that has made responsible finance and attention to human rights an important part of its identity, and that has in the past criticized the extraterritorial impact of US sanctions, also in the case of the measures adopted against UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese. The A/I case therefore shows a possible tension between two imperatives: on the one side the bank’s principles and public positions, on the other the obligations, risks, and compliance assessments connected to managing a relationship with a party placed on the OFAC lists.

Here too it is therefore useful to distinguish between the US sanction and the Italian consequence. Washington designated A/I; the decision to terminate the banking relationship, if confirmed, is instead a decision by the Italian intermediary. It is precisely this chain — OFAC → designation → compliance risk → intermediary → possible termination of the relationship — that shows how much US financial sanctions can have indirect effects even on parties located outside the United States.

The consequences reported by the collective would not concern only the bank account. The reconstructions published in the press also mention PayPal and several services connected to the A/I infrastructure, among them @autistici.org mailboxes, mailing lists, newsletters, and hosted sites or blogs. The collective spoke of approximately 20,000 people with an autistici.org mailbox and of thousands of sites and mailing lists: these are figures to be attributed to A/I and to be treated as data declared by the collective, not as independently verified estimates.

The overall picture is therefore that of a possible cascading interruption of different services: web infrastructure, domain names, electronic mail, and financial instruments. It is precisely this multiplication of points of dependency that makes the case different from the mere blocking of a web page.

13. The broader issue: when infrastructure becomes support

The case is interesting because it shifts the problem from the responsibility of the one who carries out an action to the responsibility of the one who provides the infrastructure that makes communicating, organizing, or publishing content possible.

The question does not concern only A/I. The same principle could, in the abstract, concern email providers, cloud, hosting, messaging platforms, payment systems, or registrars. The disputed point is establishing when the provision of a general-purpose service becomes, under the applicable law, material support to a terrorist organization.

14. Timeline

March 2001 — Autistici/Inventati is founded.

2004-2005 — The collective recounts a previous clash with Italian authorities concerning a server and the copying of data.

August 26, 2026 — OFAC sanctions A/I as SDGT under Executive Order 13224.

August 26, 2026 — OFAC issues General License 36, authorizing the wind down of certain operations with A/I until September 25.

August 27, 2026 — The Italian press reconstructs the designation and the collective’s response.

August 28, 2026 — Autistici.org is found unreachable; A/I attributes the problem to the DNS and points to PIR as the point of intervention.

August 28, 2026 — il manifesto publishes interviews and analyses on the political and technological dimensions of the case.

15. What we know / what we don’t know

We know: A/I was placed on the OFAC SDN list with the SDGT designation on August 26.

We know: Washington accuses A/I of providing infrastructure and digital services to violent extremists and to sanctioned terrorist subjects.

We know: A/I rejects the accusations and claims its role as infrastructure for communication, privacy, and digital self-defense.

We know: On August 28, autistici.org had a resolution/accessibility problem and the domain was detected in serverHold status.

Reconstruction: A/I attributes the intervention to the .org registry, PIR.

Not yet established: That PIR acted on OFAC’s direct order.

Not yet established: That ICANN ordered or authorized the suspension.

Not yet established: The precise chain of decision linking the OFAC designation to the blocking of the domain.

Not yet established: That the closure of the banking relationship was directly ordered by the United States.

Not yet established: That Banca Etica is legally compelled by the US sanctions to close the relationship.

According to A/I, other services were also affected or at risk, among them PayPal and services connected to email, mailing lists, and hosted sites.

According to A/I and the journalistic reconstructions, Banca Etica would have communicated its intention to close the banking relationship.

We know: A/I’s OFAC entry file also carries the indication ‘Secondary sanctions risk’.

16. Starting sources and primary sources

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