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

Sun Jan 3 16:29:58 CET 2010

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On 1/3/2010 10:15 AM, David Arcos wrote:
> From the blog:
> http://pirate-party.us/content/party-unity
> 
>          To give you a quick briefing, this individual was sentenced to
>     24 months in prison for hacking, and upon gaining probation, began
>     supporting the PPUS by helping with web security. Under his
>     probation, he was not to enter into any anarchist groups, attempt
>     any hacking, nor associate with any of his hacking contacts.
>          *With a thumbs up from the PPUS, this individual ran security
>     flaw checks for the Party, and reported his findings to the
>     administrators in the IRC.*
>          Mr. Norton, also known as K`Tetch in the IRC, subsequently took
>     the IRC logs to the volunteer's probation officer, with the intent
>     to have him either get into trouble for legally hacking into the
>     PPUS, or to have him sent back to prison.
> 
>  
> (the bold is mine)
> 
> Is that true? Did he had permissions to do the security checks?

Not from me. If he got it from anyone, he got it after the fact, from
Ryan, who wasn't officially instilled as administrator until almost 2
weeks later. Plus the service contract was between myself, and
ballotbin, rather than for PPUS, so ppus, had it been authrorised by
Glenn (at the time the party administrator) he still would have been
acting illegally.

There is also no need to modify or alter an account/election I am
running to 'check'. That he did so, and admits it openly, shows that it
was motivated less by 'security' and more by 'personal motivation'.
Jeremy's dislike of me has been clear for years, although I'm not sure why.

I categorically state, under penalty of perjury, as well, that the
following statement, starting "Mr Norton" is false in all accounts. I
can do this safe in the knowledge that I did not do the actions claimed,
which said probation office could easily confirm.

As I said further down, Jake was mislead by either Ryan or Jeremy, I
don't know who, but it's not his fault - he was posting on the best
information he had at the time. That it subsequently turned out to
mostly be false is no fault of his.

Also, to bring up another point, even his first sentence in his initial
post is a lie.
http://lists.pirateweb.net/pipermail/pp.international.general/2009-June/003529.html
clearly shows that it is NOT his first post to the list - there may be
others, but that's the first one I found.

Andrew

> 
> 
> On Sun, Jan 3, 2010 at 4:08 PM, Andrew Norton <ktetch at gmail.com
> <mailto:ktetch at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
> And just to give some context, Mr "Tyler Durden" Is Actually Jeremy
> Hammond, a convicted hacker and fraudster, who served time in Federal
> Prison for stealing Credit Card information (5,000 numbers) from a
> political protest group. He is currently on supervised release, and
> while on said release, has been charged with a number of other crimes,
> of which there are more details on his wiki page
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Hammond
> 
> I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in not wanting such convicted and habitual
> criminals associated with the pirate party, nor is the US party allowed
> to do so, under it's constitution
> (http://memwiki.pirate-party.us/index.php?title=Constitution#Article_9:_Acting_Within_the_Law_.26_Civil_Liberties)
> 
> This, as with many other of Jeremy's rantings are bordering on the
> fantastical and show a sense of paranoia that threatens to run out of
> control. They also, as is usual, bear little resemblance to the facts. A
> prime example is this assertion "1: he had no authority to do so, as he
> had resigned from the US Pirate Party and  PP-International". I was
> asked to operate the election, by the then-administrator, Glenn Kerbien,
> as he would be running, so as to have it run independently. Second, my
> resignation
> (http://lists.pirateweb.net/pipermail/pp.international.general/2009-July/003598.html)
> happened some days after the election.
> 
> Regardless, this vote of no confidence was witnessed by two seperate
> international representatives, as was the second. The logs of both are
> freely available. Under the constitution, that is the requirement, and
> those are the restrictions on taking office. Mr Martin accepted those
> restrictions the moment he accepted the office. That he has now decided
> to ignore those restrictions, once they have worked against him says
> volumes. Meanwhile, he is not answering or responding to phone calls,
> emails, sms messages or any other form of communication (from any in the
> party that have tried to contact him), and that says even more.
> 
> Andrew
> 
> 
> On 1/3/2010 8:29 AM, tyler durden wrote:
>> 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 <http://ballotbin.com>'s server. Andrew Norton of
> course is not a lawyer, a
>> computer security expert, or a representative of ballotbin.com
> <http://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.
>> ____________________________________________________
>> Pirate Parties International - General Talk
>> pp.international.general at lists.pirateweb.net
> <mailto:pp.international.general at lists.pirateweb.net>
>> http://lists.pirateweb.net/mailman/listinfo/pp.international.general
> 
____________________________________________________
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pp.international.general at lists.pirateweb.net
<mailto:pp.international.general at lists.pirateweb.net>
http://lists.pirateweb.net/mailman/listinfo/pp.international.general

> ____________________________________________________
> Pirate Parties International - General Talk
> pp.international.general at lists.pirateweb.net
> http://lists.pirateweb.net/mailman/listinfo/pp.international.general

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