Video summary
The United States recently designated the Italian artistic identity collective as a global terrorist organization under Executive Order 13204, leading to the immediate shutdown of their operations. Established in 2001 with strong anti-fascist, anti-racist, and anti-capitalist values, this group provided essential privacy-focused infrastructure for journalists, activists, and ordinary citizens seeking anonymity online. Their services included hosting email lists, blogs, chat rooms, video conferencing tools, and streaming platforms, making them a critical resource for maintaining digital privacy in an increasingly surveilled world. The collective operated on a modest budget of around €20,000 annually, primarily funded through donations and Italian government grants known as "five mille," underscoring their non-profit, community-driven nature.
The decision to target this group stems from alleged connections to various cyberattacks and sabotage incidents across Europe, including rail sabotage in France and pipeline actions involving Transpin, as well as a power attack in Germany that affected tens of thousands of households. Although the collective had previously suffered a significant breach in 2004 where Italian postal police accessed their data without consent, they responded by decentralizing their servers to prevent future intrusions. Despite these precautions, the U.S. designation forced their primary ethical bank partner, Banca Etica, to suspend and eventually terminate their accounts due to pressure from American financial intermediaries like Visa and Mastercard, effectively cutting off access to funds for their 130,000 clients without any involvement or approval from Italian authorities.
This incident highlights a troubling precedent where U.S. geopolitical interests override local privacy rights and democratic values, as seen in similar cases involving UN reporter Francesca Albanese, whose accounts were also frozen due to her reporting on Gaza. The shutdown of artistic identity not only disrupted independent digital infrastructure but also demonstrated the overwhelming power of American financial systems to dictate operations within European institutions, even those aligned with anti-fascist principles. While alternatives may eventually emerge, the loss of such a vital resource is deeply concerning, especially given its role in journalism education and grassroots activism.
Ultimately, this event serves as a stark warning about the dangers of over-reliance on U.S.-linked systems for critical digital and financial services. The collective's forced closure underscores how easily privacy tools can be dismantled through extraterritorial sanctions, setting a dangerous example that could affect similar organizations worldwide. It is imperative to restructure global digital and financial ecosystems to reduce dependency on foreign powers and ensure that the right to privacy and free expression remains protected regardless of international political pressures. The story of artistic identity is not just an Italian issue but a global one that demands urgent attention and action to prevent future occurrences.
Read the full video transcript
Hi, you might not know about the Italian
collective artistic invent
which fair. Why would you know about a
specific Italian collective? [music]
Well, let me tell you. On the 26th of
August, the US has decided to designate
this collective as a global terrorist
under the EO13204,
which is a nice way to say, hey, this uh
group is supporting terrorist acts and
you should try to do your best to shut
it off. And it happened. It shut off. It
won't. We decided to wind down
operations just yesterday. So, let's
talk about why that it's it's so bad.
Like, we should be so angry about this.
Who the hell was this aistic identity?
Well, it's a collective that began on
2001, which means that it's older than I
am. And it has anti-fascist,
anti-racist, anti-exist, anti-
capitalist, and anti-militarist values,
which, [music] you know, fair enough.
And all it does is offer private
infrastructure that everybody can use to
not get tracked. And [music] in fact,
this collective is so important that
just a few weeks ago, my fiance, who
studies journalism, and believe me, does
not particularly care for Leo. it she
doesn't follow this kind of stuff was
actually told as part of her journalism
class [music] how to use out inventity
because of how important it is that a
collective is u offering tools to stay
private [music] on the internet and this
includes email lists hosting blog chat
video conferencing streaming anonymity
tools and documentation
this kind of stuff you can easily
imagine what I'm talking about Now,
we're talking about a somewhat small
group of people. The latest numbers that
I have is like 10,000 uh people, which
is outdated info. It's probably more,
but not that big of a collective,
although very important.
And their expenses were about uh
€20,000, I think, yearly. mostly
operating on donations and fi vermille
which in Italy is some sort of donation
that you do through the government weird
stuff not [music] the time to talk about
that now it could be argued and the
police did they try to do that that
given that they you know offer some
private first off services it's [music]
easier to commit some crimes using their
infrastructure because if you want to
commit crimes you want to use privacy
first tools
I guess you could you could argue that
and in fact in uh on the 15th of June
2004 so 22 years ago the postal police
entered Aruba data center. Aruba is a
common hosting provider in Italy and the
postop police actually accessed the disk
from um updity
and the postopolis was able to access
data from artistic inventity and was
even able to insert a monitoring device
which artistic inventity didn't know
about it and they only discovered about
all of this one year later and this was
an exposure of something like 5,000
mailboxes. and tens of thousands of list
participant
which was particularly shitty. It
effectively means that the government
[music]
decided to read the data of a privately
first collective without any way for
them to know. Now as a result of that
they decided to use interchangeable and
geographically distributed servers to
make sure that this wouldn't happen
again. Now to be clear there is evidence
that connects uh RTC inventity platform
use as an example rail sabotage happened
in 2026 in France, Italy, Germany and
the Netherlands transpin pipeline action
and a German network associated with a
Berlin power attack affecting 50 45,000
households and a fatality. Apparently
some cleans or manuals tied to this were
hosted by this infrastructure and
[music]
you know Washington decided to just kill
them off which is certainly how you
address this kind of situation if
there's a privacy first infrastructure
where people are doing things and you
just shut the whole thing off just kill
them right and it worked and uh the
reason it worked is the bank now the
bank here is banketa which if you're
Italian you know is you know literally
translates like ethical bank and it's a
bank that tries to be more ethical
especially in the investment. So it
[music] tells its client how their money
is being used and tries to use it you
know in good causes instead of investing
in the military. So it [music] was a
good fit for the project. Now initially
this bank suspended the account of
aistic inventity even though it
condemned the political use of these
counterterrorism rules. That said, Visa
and Mastercard and extra euro payments
involved US linked uh intermediaries.
It's indeed not great that all of our
finance financial transactions go
through you know America American
companies means that they have a very
strong power and ultimately I don't
think that banka would have wanted to
shut down their uh bank account but
probably if had they not done that they
could have went towards some very
serious consequences that would affect
that would have affected all of Banka
Etica
clients which are like 130,000 people.
So on the 4th of September they decided
to just terminate the contract with
several tens of thousands of donated
euros [music] unavailable which means
that infantity could not access their
monies anymore. [music]
And to be clear, this happened without
any like kind of request [music] from
the Italian government, any kind of
actions from the Italian government, any
kind of court ruling. This is purely
because the US decided to design AI as
what an unlikely term invented as
[music] a terrorist organization. And
it's not the first time that it happens.
Uh you might not know of Franchescal
Banz unless you're Italian or maybe you
do know her. I don't know how famous she
is outside of Italy. Uh but she's a UN
reporter I think uh working on you know
showing that what's happening in Gaza is
a genocide which at this point is like
not a discussion anymore. It's now the
majority opinion, but you know, it was
very controversial because of US ties
with Israel and the US decided to
sanction Franchescal Banz. And as a
result, Franchescal Benz got her bank
account closed and she could not even
open a new one through Banka. So, she
just couldn't do anything. She couldn't
do [music] any financial transaction,
which again, not great. We are giving a
lot of soft power to the US if they're
able to just shut down people's bank
accounts even if they were opened within
local banks that are very supportive of
the same anti-fascist values. This is
like a big problem that we have right
[music] now. Furthermore, autistic
infantity was also blocked from from
the.org domain which means that you
couldn't even access the website. And as
a result of all of this, uh, even though
initially they said that they would try
to go forward even though it was going
to be difficult, they had to shut down
yesterday, which is sad because again,
this is shutting down an organization
that provided independent infrastructure
which was to in journalist
classes for how important it was and now
it's gone. Now, of course, there are
alternatives, [music]
not as known right now, but it'll
probably grow. We'll see some. But
still, this [music] is a horrifying
precedent, something that should not
have happened, that is happening more
frequently lately. And you know, we
should really [music] try to restructure
how we do things so that we are not as
dependent on what the US wakes up this
morning like each day. I don't know.
[music] So this is everything. Uh I
invite you to just Google the name, know
a little bit of the history of this
whole thing, [music] discover about it
because might seem some like some small
thing that's happening just in Italy,
but it's not. And if it happened here,
it could very well happen everywhere
else. And you know, [music] I don't
know, get angry. I don't know what else
to