FBI Grand Jury Forces Google to Identify Two AnarchistFederation.net Administrators
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The Federal Bureau of Investigation obtained a federal grand jury subpoena compelling Google to testify before the Lexington, Kentucky grand jury in the Eastern District of Kentucky and provide identifying information for two administrators of AnarchistFederation.net. The No Gods No Masters Network, which operates the site, published a transparency disclosure confirming the subpoena. In the same disclosure, the network confirmed that the FBI had previously subpoenaed Cloudflare about the same site in July 2026.
ANALYSIS
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) issued a grand jury subpoena through the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky directing Google to appear before the Lexington grand jury and provide identifying information for two administrators of AnarchistFederation.net. Google complied and provided personal names, residential addresses, telephone records, internet protocol addresses, and billing records for the two administrators. The subpoena was disclosed publicly by the No Gods No Masters Network (NGNM), which hosts AnarchistFederation.net, as part of a transparency disclosure process begun in July 2026 after the FBI separately subpoenaed Cloudflare about the same site. The network states it has found no public indictment or criminal case resulting from the investigation as of the disclosure date.
The sequence of FBI legal demands against AnarchistFederation.net began with a July 2026 subpoena to Cloudflare, the content delivery network through which the site operated. After the Cloudflare subpoena, the FBI sought a second subpoena to Google, which holds account data for Google Workspace services used by the NGNM network. The Eastern District of Kentucky venue indicates the grand jury investigation involves conduct connected to that district. AnarchistFederation.net has published content related to anarchist direct action campaigns in the United States and Europe, including coverage of infrastructure sabotage communiques. No NGNM-affiliated individual had been publicly charged as of the network's most recent disclosure.
The FBI's use of sequential third-party subpoenas to cloud infrastructure providers, Cloudflare followed by Google, demonstrates the investigative playbook for unmasking operators of pseudonymous extremist websites that use content delivery and cloud services to obscure administrator identities. The same approach has been applied to far-right and jihadist forums in prior investigations. The Treasury Department designated Autistici/Inventati (A/I), a different anarchist internet infrastructure provider, as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist on August 26, 2026. AnarchistFederation.net operates on NGNM infrastructure, not A/I, but the FBI investigation predates the A/I designation and is proceeding on a parallel criminal track through a grand jury rather than a civil designation process.
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