U.S. sanctions against the A/I Collective

530 points by exiguus 16 hours ago

Earlier:

US Government designates host of noblogs.org a "global terrorist" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49464391 - (131 comments)

US sanctions Italian hosting provider Autistici Inventati - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49451343 - (219 comments)

iamnothere - 15 hours ago

Everyone’s missing the big picture here which is that this targeting of infrastructure providers as “terrorists” is unprecedented and concerning: https://decode39.com/16319/autistici-inventati-case-sets-a-n...

If a radical group sets up shop on I2P, are I2P users and devs now terrorists? This is a problem.

What about Monero users/devs? Veilid? Tox? Signal?

foul - 13 hours ago

It is not unprecedented, but a lot of fools lauded moves like this when these kind of instruments were used with barely a legal net around them against islamic terrorism or cybercrime.
I'm not crying for no Al-Qaeda or 8chan, mind you. In this very year UN and ICJ officials have been targeted in a similar fashion though. When the pax americana ends like this, I don't know what else is needed for EU and Asia to raise tougher walls around the woes of any idiot hyped enough to be voted by USA citizens.
- vlyan - 11 hours ago
  
  8chan's /pol/ wasn't any different than 4chan's. the reason why the 4 is tolerated but the 8 got axed is that 4 is a honeypot and 8 wasn't.
  - filoleg - 9 hours ago
    
    > the reason why the 4 is tolerated but the 8 got axed is that 4 is a honeypot and 8 wasn't
    That's certainly a take.
    My personal take is that 4chan actually complies with the US laws, specifically the ones around promptly removing+reporting any illegal content that the US cares about (e.g., terrorism threats/CSAM/etc.), and 8chan doesn't.
    Out of curiosity, what makes you consider 4chan to be a honeypot, as opposed to it just being a platform that simply complies with the relevant laws?
    I will admit, I've spent barely a few minutes on 8 in my lifetime, so I am not equipped to judge the nuance of their situation much. With 4 though, it's been an on-and-off thing for me over the past ~15 years.
    
    vlyan - 7 hours ago
    
    we've seen several websites that do not break US law get evicted by registrars, ISPs, DDoS protection services, and other Internet landlords. 4chan miraculously survived multiple mass hysteria periods of the past decade without (iirc) any major disruptions. same as Russian 2ch -- miraculously untouched by Russia's rapid North Koreaization even though its /pol/ is overwhelmingly anti-regime.
    
    0dayz - 3 hours ago
    
    The pirate bay is still up despite being taken down, is this now also a honeypot?
    
    SmashDan - 2 hours ago
    
    The Pirate Bay has had legal issues, been raided and taken down in the past. Has 4chan has any issues like this?
    
    inigyou - 10 minutes ago
    
    The UK fined it £520,000 but has no way to enforce it.
    
    gaudystead - 8 hours ago
    
    Regarding the honeypot allegations, I'm guessing they're referring to the connections between 4chan's founder, Christopher Poole, aka "moot", and Jeffrey Epstein:
    https://www.ms.now/opinion/jeffrey-epstein-4chan-chris-poole
    
    ipaddr - 4 hours ago
    
    That article tells me 4chan wasn't a honeypot but used by Epstein for his chaos or at least he thought about using it.
    
    feshbach - 6 hours ago
    
    [flagged]
    
    sicktriple - 5 hours ago
    
    MSNBC is far left? Next you'll tell me Joe Biden is a Maoist.
    
    ipaddr - 4 hours ago
    
    MSNBC is as far left as Fox news is far right.
    
    inigyou - 10 minutes ago
    
    This is just not a true statement.
    
    sicktriple - 2 hours ago
    
    There is much farther left than left-libs. The U.S. doesn't get anywhere near as left as it goes. MSNBC is center-left, at most. This is a very right wing country.
    
    cholantesh - 4 hours ago
    
    I suspect they're a bot, fwiw.
    
    feshbach - 2 hours ago
    
    [dead]
    
    - an hour ago
    
    [deleted]
  - 0dayz - 3 hours ago
    
    Only that 8 was and is just a giant astroturfer for Watkins.
  - jchook - 2 hours ago
    
    I wonder why Epstein was communicating with 4chan's founder in 2011...
  - meowface - 6 hours ago
    
    1. It is extremely likely neither 8chan /pol/ nor 4chan /pol/ were or are honeypots.
    2. Untrue. I heavily used both (not as a right-winger; just as a decades-long anonymous imageboard user who sometimes finds it fun to rile people up in /pol/ boards). 8chan's was a lot worse and was shut down for a reason.
    
    totetsu - 3 hours ago
    
    Yeah That fucking cunt Brenton Tarrant was just ruffling feathers…
    
    sdsd - 3 hours ago
    
    [dead]
  - gfdd - 8 hours ago
    
    [flagged]
- inigyou - 12 hours ago
  
  I think the same people who opposed a/i sanctions (not AI sanctions but they're really missing out by not exploiting that confusion) also opposed sanctions for """islamic terrorism""" and for """cybercrime""".
  - foul - 9 hours ago
    
    To some thin extent (opposition to racial profiling and big copyright), mayhaps. People protest against Guantanamo, not for ISIS, and protest against identification, not for looking at pedo porn.
  - tremeouh0 - 12 hours ago
    
    [dead]
- xg15 - 12 hours ago
  
  It's the logic of Jack Bauer taken to the end. "Come on, it's obvious who the bad guys are, who needs rules?" until suddenly it's not obvious anymore...
  - antonvs - 12 hours ago
    
    My conspiracy theory is that "24" was funded by the CIA (etc.) to build public support for measures like the Patriot Act. "24" debuted 11 days after the Patriot Act became law, so they were being worked on at the same time.
    
    GolfPopper - 6 hours ago
    
    Don't forget the X-Files spinoff The Lone Gunmen. During its pilot episode, first airing March 4th, 2001, members of the U.S. government remotely hijack an airliner and try to crash it into the World Trade Center, blaming anti-American terrorist groups in order to start a new global war on terrorism for the profit of defense industry contractors.
    
    chrisweekly - 3 hours ago
    
    Yeah; how many times in 24 hours can one vigilante commit acts of thinly-narratively-justified but actually-illegal torture without audiences clueing in?
    
    rayiner - 8 hours ago
    
    You’re missing something else that happened right before 24 debuted on November 6, 2001.
    
    antonvs - 4 hours ago
    
    I’m not missing it, I thought that was obvious. See my other longer comment in this thread.
    
    3hsga14 - 8 hours ago
    
    And Epstein friends Lutnick, Larry Silverstein, Sarah Ferguson and Michael Jackson all had appointments in the WTC on 9/11 and all canceled last minute.
    The series may have been produced preemptively in case something would happen. In fact several agencies did warn in the summer of 2001 that something was likely to happen but the warnings were shut down.
    I'm not a truther, but boy they try hard to make you one ...
    
    mapontosevenths - 7 hours ago
    
    >And Epstein friends Lutnick, Larry Silverstein, Sarah Ferguson and Michael Jackson all had appointments in the WTC on 9/11 and all canceled last minute.
    I looked into this so I could call you out for spreading disinformation.
    Except what I found was that this statement is factually accurate as far as I can tell. Each person had their own separate story as to why they didn't go that day.
    Huh. Not sure what to make of this.
    
    toast0 - 6 hours ago
    
    > Not sure what to make of this.
    What was their rate of last minute cancellations? I suspect people in that circle frequently change plans, sometimes at the last minute, so having changed plans on that day would be unremarkable had that day itself been unremarkable.
    Not to mention the first plane hit at at 8:46 am. Looking at details, none of these seem remarkable, and wouldn't have been remembered or written about if they happened the day before...
    Sarah Ferguson's meeting was scheduled fot 8:45, but she was delayed by traffic after coming from an interview. ... Morning traffic in New York on a business day is not unusual and busy people miss tightly scheduled meetings because of it.
    Michael Jackson performed in a concert the day before and was reportedly up late talking on the phone. I didn't see a scheduled time for the meeting, but a missed meeting after a concert doesn't seem surprising to me. Concert started at 7:40 pm according to a ticket stub photo here [1]
    Larry Silverstein was reportedly double booked and kept a dermetology appointment his wife had booked after he missed one a month prior. Stuff happens, your wife books medical appointments for you without checking your calendar and you don't miss them twice.
    Lutnick took his eldest son to their first day of Kindergarten. Which is something you do if you can. I didn't see any indication that he had a meeting scheduled. I'm guessing there's no consipiracy or even reporting about him going to the first day of Kindergarten for his other three children, but he probably did.
    [1] https://www.concertarchives.org/concerts/michael-jackson-30t...
    
    inigyou - 7 minutes ago
    
    If celebrities keep their appointments say 80% of the time, then for every near miss, there should be four who actually died. Are there?
    
    ipaddr - 4 hours ago
    
    It would be strange in 2001 for a father to take his kids to their first kindergarden. It would be stranger in a Jewish family.
    
    tgma - 6 hours ago
    
    > Not sure what to make of this.
    Not much as the sample has (literally) survival bias.
    
    mapontosevenths - 6 hours ago
    
    I feel like it's just a statistical fact that many people used to visit and cancel visits there every day, but it's hard to say how unlikely this was without numbers.