<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div>Here's a press release we just sent out.</div><div><br></div><div>Kurtis W. Hanna</div><div>Pirate Candidate for Mayor</div><div>Minneapolis, MN</div><div>Twitter: @CaptainKurtis</div><div><a href="http://mnPirateParty.org">mnPirateParty.org</a><br><br><br>Begin forwarded message:<br><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div><b>From:</b> Pirate Party <<a href="mailto:mnpirateparty@gmail.com">mnpirateparty@gmail.com</a>><br><b>Date:</b> October 31, 2013, 5:55:10 AM CDT<br><b>Subject:</b> <b>PIRATE PARTY MINNESOTA: VISION FOR FREEDOM AND TRANSPARENCY</b><br><br></div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div><div dir="ltr"><p style="font-size:13px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Georgia,'Times New Roman','Bitstream Charter',Times,serif;line-height:19px"><b>PIRATE PARTY MINNESOTA: VISION FOR FREEDOM AND TRANSPARENCY</b><br>
<b><i>PIRATE CANDIDATES SEEK TO PATCH MINNEAPOLIS GOVERNMENT</i></b></p><p style="font-size:13px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Georgia,'Times New Roman','Bitstream Charter',Times,serif;line-height:19px">
<b><i>FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - Oct. 31, 2013 </i></b></p><p style="font-size:13px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Georgia,'Times New Roman','Bitstream Charter',Times,serif;line-height:19px">CONTACT: KURT HANNA - PHONE - <a href="tel:612-424-1753" value="+16124241753" target="_blank">612-424-1753</a> - <a href="mailto:mnpirateparty@gmail.com" target="_blank">mnpirateparty@gmail.com</a><br>
SCOTT HARGARTEN - PHONE <a href="tel:651-252-4365" value="+16512524365" target="_blank">651-252-4365</a><br></p><p style="font-size:13px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Georgia,'Times New Roman','Bitstream Charter',Times,serif;line-height:19px">
The Hennepin County Attorneys Office signs off on thousands of administrative subpoenas each year. Newly released records show 2010 investigations forcing Facebook, cell phone and Internet Service Providers, hotels and video game companies to fork over user data without a warrant. (FULL PDF: <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/180434910/2010-Administrative-Subpoenas-Hennepin-County-Attorneys-Office" target="_blank">http://www.scribd.com/doc/180434910/2010-Administrative-Subpoenas-Hennepin-County-Attorneys-Office</a> / partial OCR Excel pt1: <a href="http://bit.ly/1h2u1Ky" target="_blank">http://bit.ly/1h2u1Ky</a> pt2: <a href="http://bit.ly/HgmMOO" target="_blank">http://bit.ly/HgmMOO</a> ) Candidates running for office in Minneapolis with the new Pirate Party of Minnesota are calling for an end to unaccountable government surveillance, wasteful spending and local militarization.</p>
<p style="font-size:13px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Georgia,'Times New Roman','Bitstream Charter',Times,serif;line-height:19px">The Pirate Party of Minnesota ( <a href="http://mnpirateparty.org/" target="_blank">http://mnpirateparty.org</a> ) started meeting this summer weeks before NSA whistleblower Ed Snowden revealed America's massive new domestic surveillance machine, which uses secret administrative subpoenas and court orders to track, for example, all Verizon calls: <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/jun/06/verizon-telephone-data-court-order" target="_blank">http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/jun/06/verizon-telephone-data-court-order</a> . In next week's Minneapolis municipal elections, candidates ( <a href="https://mnpirateparty.org/minneapolis-2013-municipal-pirate-candidates/" target="_blank">https://mnpirateparty.org/minneapolis-2013-municipal-pirate-candidates/</a> ) Kurt Hanna for Mayor, Vince Coffeen for Ward 1 (<a href="https://www.facebook.com/Vinceforward1" target="_blank">https://www.facebook.com/Vinceforward1</a> ), Michael Katch for Ward 3, Scott Hargarten for Ward 10, and Doug Sembla for Board of Estimate & Taxation are running with Pirate Party MN support.</p>
<p style="font-size:13px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Georgia,'Times New Roman','Bitstream Charter',Times,serif;line-height:19px">"Knowing that one's entire digital footprint is being intercepted and archived by unconstitutional government agencies, void of proper checks and balances, easily causes 'chilling effects' among individuals," said Hanna. "Conversely, these conditions also create fertile ground for creative, collaborative partnerships and new foundations, such as the reaction to British oppression in the American colonies. In this tradition, the Minnesota Pirate Party is raising a new flag to rally around."</p>
<p style="font-size:13px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Georgia,'Times New Roman','Bitstream Charter',Times,serif;line-height:19px">"Surveillance like this creates a paranoia culture," Hargarten said, "which drives people out of the public square. We need elected officals who understand how toxic this is to our freedom."</p>
<p style="font-size:13px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Georgia,'Times New Roman','Bitstream Charter',Times,serif;line-height:19px">"I firmly believe in the Jeffersonian tradition," Coffeen said, "of stepping aside from one's daily life and serving one's community through local governance in elected office. I have stepped aside from my daily life as a husband, a father an artist and a technician to do my part. The time has come for drastic change in data and personal privacy practices and the current cadre of entrenched politicians and political parties needs to be ejected in order to accomplish this. If elected city councilor for Ward 1 in Minneapolis, I will push for more transparency and accountability in city government."</p>
<p style="font-size:13px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Georgia,'Times New Roman','Bitstream Charter',Times,serif;line-height:19px">"Our goal is to promote transparency and equality," Sembla said. "The economy has devolved into the people on the ground being constantly monitored, in case the masses decide that they want to do more than survive. We need people to support us as we expose and change these policies. This is a growing movement worldwide."</p>
<p style="font-size:13px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Georgia,'Times New Roman','Bitstream Charter',Times,serif;line-height:19px">The Minnesota Pirate Party has already hosted two cryptoparties to share free encryption skills and tools to the public regardless of their politics, and will host another cryptoparty also showcasing our open decision making web software in late November.</p>
<p style="font-size:13px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Georgia,'Times New Roman','Bitstream Charter',Times,serif;line-height:19px">The international Pirate Party network was founded in Sweden in 2006, defending Internet freedom & challenging corporate "intellectual property" power. Today Pirates hold seats as high as the Icelandic & European parliaments while developing open decisionmaking, publishing data and routing around censorship regimes in dozens of countries.</p>
<p style="font-size:13px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Georgia,'Times New Roman','Bitstream Charter',Times,serif;line-height:19px">On the local level, the Hennepin County Attorneys Office, Sheriff Rich Stanek, and Bureau of Criminal Apprehension officials refuse to show under what conditions they target Minnesotans with the Harris Kingfish cell hacking device. See stonewalling correspondence here: <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/180420450/Data-request-kingfish-hennepin-county-response" target="_blank">http://www.scribd.com/doc/180420450/Data-request-kingfish-hennepin-county-response</a></p>
<p style="font-size:13px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Georgia,'Times New Roman','Bitstream Charter',Times,serif;line-height:19px">Are they using this tech to track political activists or other elected officials? Without boundaries this amounts to a unconstitutional general warrant on the population at large, while most of the public is totally unaware how easily forked over the details of their lives like hotel and video game records in Minnesota are, without any disclosure of these snooping operations.</p>
<p style="font-size:13px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Georgia,'Times New Roman','Bitstream Charter',Times,serif;line-height:19px">Besides surveillance, domestic militarization is also expanding unchecked, without oversight. The federal shutdown proved we can't afford more wasteful programs, but St. Cloud just received a Pentagon Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) battle wagon for its SWAT team, awarded outside the so-called Twin Cities "Urban Area" of the Department of Homeland Security Urban Areas Security Initiative (UASI) LINK. According to the St. Cloud Times "$3.5 million worth of military surplus" have been handed out to Minnesota local law enforcement in just the last two months! Source: <a href="http://www.sctimes.com/article/20131021/NEWS01/310210048/" target="_blank">http://www.sctimes.com/article/20131021/NEWS01/310210048/</a></p>
<p style="font-size:13px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Georgia,'Times New Roman','Bitstream Charter',Times,serif;line-height:19px">More than a million dollars in UASI federal funds borrowed at interest was approved by the Minneapolis City Council Public Safety Committee, without any disclosure of what specifically it will be spent on. Here is the vague Minneapolis UASI funding plan putting us another million into debt. ( <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/178221190/Minneapolis-2013-Urban-Areas-Security-Initiative-UASI-Grants" target="_blank">http://www.scribd.com/doc/178221190/Minneapolis-2013-Urban-Areas-Security-Initiative-UASI-Grants</a> ) The Pirate Party would block these wasteful programs and show where this money is going if others pushed them through.</p>
<p style="font-size:13px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Georgia,'Times New Roman','Bitstream Charter',Times,serif;line-height:19px">Previous federal funds went to create a new Strategic Information Center for Minneapolis in which city police officers monitor Occupy barbecues on Facebook, as shown in a data release earlier this year. ( <a href="http://www.hongpong.com/archives/2013/01/09/mpd-tracking-occupymn-facebook-bbqs-minneapolis-secret-strategic-information-cen" target="_blank">http://www.hongpong.com/archives/2013/01/09/mpd-tracking-occupymn-facebook-bbqs-minneapolis-secret-strategic-information-cen</a></p>
<p style="font-size:13px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Georgia,'Times New Roman','Bitstream Charter',Times,serif;line-height:19px">A whole new industry of contractors already market ( <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/meet-the-private-companies-helping-cops-spy-on-protesters-20131024" target="_blank">http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/meet-the-private-companies-helping-cops-spy-on-protesters-20131024</a> ) social media miners & analytic engines for targeting protests to local law enforcement, then get paid through grant programs like UASI, and load the things up via administrative subpoenas without any judicial or legislative check. They'll find people to target through sweeping cell hacking techniques like Kingfish, unregulated because they withhold the nature of these hacking systems from the Legislature and the public. This whole apparatus helps keep the two party system firmly in control, the Pirate Party concludes.</p>
<p style="font-size:13px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Georgia,'Times New Roman','Bitstream Charter',Times,serif;line-height:19px">Next week, you can vote Pirate Party across Minneapolis, and work with us in 2014 exposing these issues to prevent more wasteful, spying and abusive government.</p>
<p style="font-size:13px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Georgia,'Times New Roman','Bitstream Charter',Times,serif;line-height:19px">Note: the administrative subpoena index was obtained via Rich Neumeister's independent research on privacy and open government, for possible legislation at the Minnesota Legislature. Mr. Neumeister puts public data online for anybody to use at <a href="http://opensecretsmn.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">http://opensecretsmn.blogspot.com</a> .</p>
<p style="font-size:13px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Georgia,'Times New Roman','Bitstream Charter',Times,serif;line-height:19px">PIRATE PARTY URLS: <a href="http://mnpirateparty.org/" target="_blank">http://mnpirateparty.org</a> - <a href="https://www.facebook.com/MNPirateParty" target="_blank">https://www.facebook.com/MNPirateParty</a> - <a href="https://twitter.com/mnpirateparty" target="_blank">https://twitter.com/mnpirateparty</a></p>
<p style="font-size:13px;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Georgia,'Times New Roman','Bitstream Charter',Times,serif;line-height:19px">POST URL: <a href="https://mnpirateparty.org/pirate-party-minnesota-vision-for-freedom-and-transparency/" target="_blank">https://mnpirateparty.org/pirate-party-minnesota-vision-for-freedom-and-transparency/</a> </p>
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