Shadowy Foreign Tech Group Keeps Police Off Antifa’s Trail
A foreign “anti-fascism” group hides leftists’ personal data from law enforcement while they promote violence and harassment on fringe websites such as a blog that recently called for attacking aircraft in Portland…
A foreign “anti-fascism” group hides leftists’ personal data from law enforcement while they promote violence and harassment on fringe websites such as a blog that recently called for attacking aircraft in Portland, Oregon.
Several radical sites are able to stay anonymous thanks to free services from the Autistici/Inventati (A/I) Collective, an Italy-based organization, a 🏢Daily Caller News Foundation analysis found. The Collective’s tools create a world of digital secrecy where leftists boast about violent attacks, encourage insurrection and publish “doxxing” materials with individuals’ home addresses.
By agreeing to A/I Collective’s policies and its far-left “principles,” one may request email accounts, a blogging page, private messaging and more, all designed to leave no digital trail leading back to a person, according to the group’s website. Its email server, for example, does not track senders’ location like others do, and its blogging platform — NoBlogs
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The A/I Collective did not respond to multiple requests for comment from the DCNF.
One prominent user of NoBlogs is “Rose City Counter-Info,” (RCCI) an Antifa-aligned siteblasted by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) over a post that called on people to fill the streets and illegally shine laser pointers at federal helicopters in Portland. No reports have emerged of Portlanders following through with the planned Oct. 11 attack.
“Aiming a laser pointer at an aircraft is a federal crime, and we have seen multiple attempts to use them to temporarily blind the pilots,” DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told the DCNF. “This is incredibly dangerous for the aircraft personnel and for the public’s safety. Antifa domestic terrorists will not overrun our cities.”
DHS also threatened criminal charges in July over RCCI’s post “doxxing” Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents’ home addresses. “No peace for ICE agents,” the title reads.
RCCI’s website says it is powered by A/I Collective’s “R*” plan, which hosts the site on multiple servers so that there are backups if one is “compromised,” according to the collective.
A/I was founded in 2001 in Italy and functions as a nonprofit, requiring anyone using its free programs to profess “anti-fascism,” “anti-racism,” “anti-transphobia” and other values, according to its website. The group’s name refers to its use of “autism with invention.”
Associazione AI ODV, an entity with a listed address in San Giuliano Terme in Italy, manages the website’s servers. “ODV” means “organismo di vigilanza” or “supervisory body,” an entity that helps another avoid liability for crimes under Italian law. Associazione AI ODV’s website names no staff.
“After 2005 we have been constantly pestered by prosecutors and security forces … asking 🇺🇸US to hand over users’ data and identities and we are proud to say we were always able to answer: we are sorry, but we do not have them,” the A/I Collective says on its “history” page.
A/I Collective’s NoBlogs also hosts “Abolition Media,” a pro-terrorism forum that was part of the FBI’s investigation into left-wing arsonist Casey Goonan. He was sentenced in September for a series of attacks in California.
A June 2024 post on Abolition Media showed pictures of a police car firebombed by Goonan and an anonymous message decrying “genocide” in Gaza, the FBI said in a criminal complaint, naming Goonan as the likely author. The FBI mentioned that Abolition Media “is hosted on a server run by an organization based in Europe,” alluding to the A/I Collective.
Abolition Media did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
Goonan’s arson attack reflects a broader playbook by which NoBlogs users brag about their crimes shortly after committing them in an anonymous post, sometimes called a “communique,” while leaving out incriminating details. Pro-abortion group Jane’s Revenge posted similar communiques via NoBlogs in 2022 describing how it vandalized and burned pro-life facilities after the leak of a Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade.
“We are forced to adopt the minimum military requirement for a political struggle,” Jane’s Revenge wrote in a May 2022 post taking credit for arson at the pro-life Wisconsin Family Action’s headquarters. “Again, this was only a warning. Next time the infrastructure of the enslavers will not survive.”
Jane’s Revenge uses the A/I Collective’s R* plan, its website says. The DCNF could not reach the group for comment.
Other blogs the A/I Collective hosted include “Scenes from the Atlanta Forest,” where anonymous authors took credit for torching a New York police vehicle and damagingotherproperty in multiple states starting in 2023, archived webpages show. It also hosted “Against Beltway Fascism,” a blog that posted the purported home addresses of staff from the conservative Heritage Foundation in 2024, according to archived posts. Bothblogs have been deleted.
“Scenes from the Atlanta Forest” said in October 2023 that it received a complaint from the A/I Collective about its own doxxing practices, adding that only legally obtained information about someone should be published, an archived post shows. Rose City Counter-Info’s content doxxing ICE agents, however, is still online.
A/I Collective is not the only group of its kind on the extreme left, according to terrorism expert Kyle Shideler, a senior analyst at the Center for Security Policy.
“This is part of a larger effort by anarchists to create their own online spaces that do not rely upon the usual corporate providers,” Shideler told the DCNF. Shideler testified to Congress about the inner workings of Antifa in 2020.
The A/I Collective has an online list of a dozen “radical tech collectives” offering similar digital security tools.
President Donald Trump directed law enforcement to aggressively target leftist extremism after Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk’s Sept. 10 murder. After declaring Antifa a “domestic terrorist organization,” the president said at an Oct. 8 White House event that he also wants the State Department to designate Antifa a foreign terrorist organization (FTO). That method is likely the only way the A/I Collective could come under serious legal scrutiny, Shideler told the DCNF.
“If the Trump administration achieves an FTO designation for Antifa or even for some of these groups, going after organizations like this that provide material support would be job one,” Shideler said. “It’s the primary value of a designation. But short of a designation, they would probably really struggle to go after these kinds of entities, since the services they provide are otherwise lawful.”
Trump officials have not described what steps they may take toward the designation.
“The United States has a variety of options available to target terrorists and terrorist organizations, and the State Department will use all available tools to keep Americans safe,” a State Department spokesperson told the DCNF.
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