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

[Marcus Kesler]

I for one am concerned that this is becoming a mudslinging contest. I will 
just comment on the actual events over the last few months, and leave the 
personal attacks out of it. For more details about the actions that let to 
the removal of Mr. Martin please refer to our meeting minutes for 11/09 and 
12/09: http://memwiki.pirate-party.us/index.php?title=IRC_Meetings

PPI has already been involved in this situation over the last few months. An 
attempt was made to resolve this situation through mediation under the 
guidance of multiple PPI members, one of which was chosen by Mr. Martin.

The decision to remove Mr. Martin was made by a majority of the USPP 
membership, not Mr. Norton, and any attempt to place the blame solely on his 
shoulder is misguided. PPI representatives were present during all meetings 
when votes of no confidence were passed, and PPI representatives were 
present when the decision was reached to remove Mr. Martin from office.

We have elections for new officers in less than 30 days. If you believe that 
the USPP is headed in the wrong direction, then I welcome you to nominate 
yourself for office.

Marcus Kesler

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "tyler durden" <whooka at gmail.com>
To: <pp.international.general at lists.pirateweb.net>
Sent: Sunday, January 03, 2010 7:29 AM
Subject: [pp.int.general] US Pirate Party and Andrew Norton


> 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.
> ____________________________________________________
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