Comment by jtrn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jtrn | Hacker News Reader

I also oppose fascism, militarism, racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia, like what A/I do... And none of that is illegal... At least not in any civilised society. So what did they do to trigger so many? I remember the Norwegian stuff (since I’m Norwegian), and I remember thinking it sounded like bullshit to copy their entire server drive when they wanted access to the blog of two people.

From what I could gather, it seems various governments accused them of deliberately providing infrastructure to groups whose violent activities they supported, such as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), with communications associated with railway sabotage, attacks on energy infrastructure and the “Jane’s Revenge” arson campaign (whatever the hell that is).

Here’s a snippet I found on the net: "Italian police installed a server backdoor in 2004 during an investigation into the anarchist collective Crocenera. It was discovered in 2005. According to contemporary EDRi reporting, the access potentially exposed communications belonging to thousands of unrelated users; EDRi explicitly noted that actual collection of unrelated data had not been proven. EDRi’s contemporary report"

Huge disclaimer on this, since it’s just my musings: This might be one of the situations where both sides are in the wrong. It’s possible that A/I willfully turned a blind eye to actual illegal activity by its users, and refused to cooperate with legal investigations. At the same time, various governments, including mine, overreacted and behaved unethically and maybe even illegally because A/I “didn’t want to play ball.”

Just speculation. But the fact that I can’t easily find concrete examples of what A/I supposedly did wrong makes me inclined to feel sympathy for them. I hate unspecific allegations like “facilitation of problematic and terroristic-adjacent activities.” That’s some 1984-ish bullshit.

I have no clue what I’m talking about here, though. Strange situation and too little information...

https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/20... This designation offers some specific examples of violence being coordinated using their systems. Some are indeed extreme, if true. That doesn’t invalidate their mission or overall contribution to the world at large; it just was sufficient ammo for extinguishing another threat to power.

This does not show what they (A/I) did. The only concrete examples are of bad behavior by some users. Then there’s a bunch of generic claims against A/I, with NO specifics.

So, yeah, it might be true. But I find no concrete examples of what bad stuff A/I themselves did, just their users. Personally, I would like for there to be at least SOME concrete examples. Like, “This convicted terrorist had a blog on their infrastructure, and A/I refused to hand over data they had, even when presented with a valid court order.” Or something like that. Is it too much to ask that the government provide some concrete evidence, not just abstract vage accusations, when doing something as drastic as designating someone a terrorist organization? It would seem so...

This is a knock on the state.gov item, not your comment. Your comment was good.

The problem is that, as A/I themselves explained (https://www.inventati.org/who/collective), they worked hard to ensure that they do not possess any evidence of or data about who is using their infrastructure.

autistici.org said the opposite:

https://web.archive.org/web/20260826145332/https://www.autis...

"We provide our services strictly for non-commercial use, in order to provide support exclusively to individuals or groups we feel we have an affinity with. In order to verify the existence of these pre-conditions, each and every service request is processed manually by one of our volunteers and is in a dialogical form. All requests are anonymized and will be destroyed."

Anonymized how? Before the first contact? After the conversation?

If anyone here wants to set up a similar service: This is patently stupid for an ISP to attempt.

Sounds like they vet the users request before giving them access. After that the usage is anonymous. It’s not that deep

> https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/20... This designation offers some specific examples of violence being coordinated using their systems

All that demonstrates is that they operated a public email/messaging server. One could have coordinated the exact same things using ProtonMail or Signal.

> “That doesn’t invalidate their mission or overall contribution to the world at large;”

Give me a break. Ends to not justify all means. This is a completely appropriate response by the state department.

Why aren't they banning Signal?

I note that that extensive list only contains a single death, due to a power failure. Extreme civil disobedience, but not really terrorism.

> And none of that is illegal... At least not in any civilised society

I mean, the capitalist system is a barbaric system with defenders that do make opposition illegal...

Yeah, but there are degrees. I’d rather have a conversation about trans rights here in Oslo than in Afghanistan.

How do you think LGBTQI+ rights came exist? It was not a pretty, blood-free, submissive process. And we're still far from LGBTQI+ rights being normalized.

How about workers rights? Slavery? Any progress that you'd think of as civilizing was not achieved without blood.

Indeed. Must also acknowledge that such tactics generate the seeds of opposition. i.e. hate begets hate and violence begets violence.

I don't remember any LGBTQI+ wars here in the Czech Republic, so "blood free" actually seems like a good characterisation. Sometimes the system just works.

See also the Velvet Revolution for a pretty large shift away from totalitarianism without any deaths.

I don't remember any LGBTQI+ wars inside my house either, but they're respected here. That's strange isn't it?

It is strange. I certainly wouldn't think your house, having been isolated from western society over decades by a communist regime and heavily-patrolled borders, would respond to social activism in foreign countries. But maybe there's just some secret house mycelium for sharing progressive ideas that I don't know about.

It's very clear you do not have a grasp of Marxism or Communism. You'd know that the worker class is only one.

Theoretical aphorisms can't override the facts of recorded history. If the harsh border control and cultural isolation of the East Bloc ran counter to Marxist principles, then you can complain to the dead leaders of the USSR, but that's about it.

Check the history of the different communist movements. Maybe an entrypoint would be this: today there is the Fourth International. The USSR was born out of the Third International with Lenin, and the Fourth International opposed/opposes the USSR's practices and because of that the USSR hunted them down using their agents whom eventually killed Trotski.

People who want bloodshed tend to say this… It’s melodramatic.

You could say that about anything classified as human progress. How did we improve things so that people could have electricity and safety? At the cost of deaths and suffering by everyone who built the Hoover Dam and similar projects. The same goes for "stop killing patients by going dirty from corpses to the delivery room," even when we knew it was unsafe. There is always death and blood related to any topic. How do you think you got the device you are communicating with? Through the death and suffering of someone in Congo, mining cobalt, and someone working themselves to death in a factory.

I have lived through the normalization of gay rights in Norway, and saying that it was a process marked by blood and suffering is moronic. It was painful, unnecessary, overdue, and many other things. But saying that it was a bloody conflict is just not true, at least not any more than many other progressive movements. So progress doesn't have to be violent.

You could say that this is not the lived experience of many people, and that is true. But that doesn’t automatically mean it has to be so for everybody, and it does not have to be inevitable for any cause. It’s not statistically more violent than many other things.

I’m getting tired of the violent and angry rhetoric people spew without pushback. Stop idealizing and glorifying violence and conflict to solve any problem. It seems more and more to me that this is violent ideation first, with the cause being secondary.

I have not glorified violence nor called to do violence to anyone. You seems to have misunderstood: I wish for violence to stop. It was always the oppressed's blood that was spilled by the establishment through police force every time they protested in the streets, and every time they were uncomfortable. Take the workers day as an example. It's egregious to me to call a protest violence.

The only thing the oppressed can do is to be uncomfortable, organize, and not let the system claim their souls and bodies. The only thing the system does is perpetuate itself, inflicting violence to the oppressed, in an endless spiral towards the bottom.

You're right, of course, but you're on a website of a VC firm.

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