[pp.int.general] US Pirate Party and Andrew Norton

[tyler durden]

Hello there, I apologize that this is my first post to the list, but I
felt I couldn't be quiet anymore, and that international intervention
in the US Pirate Party might be necessary.

Firstly I'd like to point out Andrew Norton's recent statements to
this list is NOT in line with any sort of consensus with other members
of the US Pirate Party. He is not a spokesperson for the USPP, is not
an official officer, and really has no business communicating the
status of the party through quasi-official announcements. Some of the
disagreements and contentions people have with Andrew is explained at
this post, http://pirate-party.us/content/party-unity but I will try
to explain some additional details here.

The Andrew Norton's recent history with the US Pirate Party has been
unprofessional at best and treasonous at worst. His actions have very
much divided the USPP to the point of disfunction and a possible split
might be in the works.

During the most recent Pirate Party elections where Ryan Martin was
running against Channel6, Andrew Norton (K`Tetch) took it upon himself
to administer the election procedures. Many people were raising
objections to Andrew Norton's voting process - 1: he had no authority
to do so, as he had resigned from the US Pirate Party and
PP-International, and 2:  He developed the rules in secret and
announced it 24 hours before voting was to begin, and 3. The voter
requirements he specified were highly contested by many active members
of the party because it required that in to vote you had to have a
website/forum account for more than a month. A lot of people were
disenfranchised from the voting process because of this regulation.
Despite this, Ryan Martin won the vote and reached an agreement with
Channel6 to split up the officer positions.

There's more. During the election process, a minor sql injection
vulnerability was discovered in the 3rd party polling script
BallotBin.com that allowed users to hijack other user's polls. That
vulnerability was communicated to the company via email in which the
company thanked the person who discovered the vulnerability for
finding and reporting it. After the election results were in and the
election closed, there was a  demonstration of the vulnerability in
which the candidate "Eugene Debs" was humorously added to the ballot.

A little while later it was discovered that one Andrew Norton took it
upon himself to notify law enforcement of the supposed illegal hacking
of ballotbin.com's server. Andrew Norton of course is not a lawyer, a
computer security expert, or a representative of ballotbin.com. When
asked why he would take it upon himself to snitch out another
associated pirate party fella to the authorities for simply
investigating the security of an election system, he commended "best
buy some astroglide".

Read the logs of Andrew Norton confirming that he had reported the
incident to the authorities: (full logs @
http://andrewnorton.pastebin.com/m72e92319 )

""K`Tetch> Speaking of, I sent an email, the other day, to the parole
offices in Chicago. Goign to file a report for that little mess about
you did with the election form.
<K`Tetch> best buy some astroglide, tylerknowsthis
...
<K`Tetch> that a fucking moron that has no brain, and just wants to
destroy everything is going to prison for being an arsehole, yes, I
can sleep soundly"

I am reminded of the various vulnerabilities found in Diebold election
systems years ago. The people who reported these vulnerabilities were
highly regarded by members of our community as fighting for democracy
and exposing corruption. BallotBin.com which ran the party's election
thanked us for reporting the vulnerability.

So what's up with Andrew Norton snitching out other members of the
pirate party community ? When asked, he replied something about the
duty to uphold law and order (what is he a cop?)

How far will that logic go? What happens if someone starts trading
URLs to various torrents on pirate party IRC channels? Will Andrew
start reporting people for copyright infringement?


The whole situation is very disturbing and gives me absolutely no hope
for the US Pirate Party. Although I support Ryan Martin as
administrator for the party, and I like his ideas, writings and
contributions to the project, there is a very bizarre right-wing
reactionary element to some of the people involved with the project
that sickens me. I do not see the US Pirate Party as being a vehicle
for bringing about any sort of institutional or systematic change that
is necessary, nor do I see it's political analysis being relevant to
people who are struggling in this country. I am in the process of
writing an article critiquing the US Pirate Party over the past few
years and am open to comments from the international community.