Amsterdam police seized an Italian activist provider's server at US request

Police in Amsterdam have seized a server belonging to Autistici/Inventati (A/I), an Italian volunteer collective that has hosted email, websites and blogs for activists since 2001. They acted on Tuesday 13 October on a request for legal assistance from the United States, the Dutch newspaper NRC reported, and a police spokesperson confirmed it. The US accuses A/I of supporting antifa and put it on its terrorist sanctions list in August. A/I had already shut down in September, so what the US is after now is the data left behind.

What the police did

The server was taken from a data centre in Amsterdam's eastern district, near Science Park. The police told the regional broadcaster NH Nieuws that they are making a copy of the data for the Americans: "We take the data out and make it available to America. It is a kind of copy." They said they do not look at the content and could not comment on it, and that the server will go back to the data centre once they are done. The police have not said which data will be handed over. None of the reports mentions a Dutch court reviewing the request.

A person connected to A/I told NRC they were "not worried, but surprised". They had hoped that dissolving the collective would be enough for the Americans, and said the server holds nothing that could cause problems for former users. According to the same source, the server was encrypted and was among the last pieces of infrastructure waiting to be removed.

Why the US went after A/I

On 26 August the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control designated A/I a Specially Designated Global Terrorist, alongside Palestine Action and Masar Badil. Treasury described A/I as an entity that supplies "specialized digital architecture, tools, and services for Antifa cells and other violent far-left extremists", including encrypted email, website hosting and its Noblogs platform. It also said A/I serves only users it vets for ideological alignment, and named the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) among them. The same release states that the US "does not sanction persons for engaging in political speech". A/I rejects the terrorism label and describes its work as digital self-defence tools for activists.

The sanctions took effect within days. PayPal suspended the collective's account on 27 August. On 28 August the autistici.org domain stopped working after Public Interest Registry, the US operator of .org, put it on serverHold, the same kind of hold that knocked Telegram's t.me links out for about a day in July after a different OFAC listing. Italy's Banca Etica froze the bank account on 1 September. On 6 September A/I announced it would close, citing the risk of "legal and financial consequences to those who are close to us". About 16,000 mailboxes, 1,500 websites, 5,500 mailing lists and 10,000 blogs went with it.

What it shows about European hosting

An Italian provider, a Dutch data centre and a European police force were not enough to keep the data out of US hands. The legal basis was a mutual legal assistance agreement between the Netherlands and the US, and the Amsterdam police said they do not concern themselves with what is on the server. A/I's domain fell because its registry is American. PayPal is bound by US sanctions, and an Italian bank chose to freeze the account rather than risk them. The freedom of expression group ARTICLE 19 warned in September that suspending a provider's domain "can simultaneously disable thousands of otherwise unrelated websites and email services".

For anyone using a small privacy-focused provider, the lesson is narrower than "Europe is not safe". What protected A/I's former users here, if the source is right, is that the server was encrypted and the collective had stopped running services before the seizure. Where a server sits matters less than what is stored on it in readable form.