Pirate Party of Canada Forum

 First of all, please excuse any spelling, syntax, or grammatical errors because it is almost 4:00am, and I am quite tired. Secondly, please take a moment to read the attached IRC chat log. At the moment, Wikileaks is a monolithic beacon of free press on the Internet and (forced) open government. This organization is operated with a tremendous risk for those involved, all to support a idea that we include in our core platform. I would argue that there isn't a single government in power that would wipe Wikileaks out of existence if not for the political reprecussions of such actions. Because of all this, I personally believe that we have an obligation to publically release a carefully worded statement supporting the existence and actions (with relevance to corporate and government whistleblowing) of both Julian Assange and Wikileaks (I argue that you have to support them both for the same effect, because to many they are synonymous). There is no other party in Canada (and probably North America) that would even think about supporting Wikileaks even if ideologically. In doing this, we will send an undeniable and powerful message across the globe that the Pirate Party of Canada supports freedom of the press and open government. However taking the time required to write and edit this release, this would need to be done as soon as possible because quite frankly we may not have this same opportunity in the near future depending on the actions of various governments. In addition to this possibly pessamistic observation, Wikileaks is currently an extremely hot topic due to the recent diplomatic cable leak.

 In releasing such a powerful message and taking a stand against governments who keep secrets from their people, we would also be opening ourselves up for a lot of media exposure (via both the Internet and news outlets) and discussion which would further spread the name "Pirate Party of Canada" through the masses. Why? Because this is incredibly controversial. Governments and political figures (predominantly within the United States, unsurprisingly) have jumped to criticize Wikileaks. This includes comments from figures such as Peter King (chairman of the Homeland Security Committee of the United States House of Representatives) labeling Wikileaks as a "foreign terrorist organization." [1] Sarah Palin (VP candidate in the last US election and possible 2010 republican candidate, for those unfamiliar with American politics) also stated "Assange is not a 'journalist', any more than the 'editor' of al-Qaeda's new English-language magazine Inspire is a 'journalist'" in addition to asking "Why was [Wikileaks] not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders?" [2] Additionally, I'm sure we're all familiar with Tam Flanagan's (ex-senior advisor and strategist for Stephen Harper) remark "I think Assange should be assassinated." [3] These are only statements found on Wikipedia and only statements made by political figures, and I'm sure Google would produce more. If needed, I volunteer to help with writing or editing the release.

 Who knows, maybe the rest of PPI will follow our example.

1. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20023941-38.html#ixzz16keYyAPb (http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20023941-38.html#ixzz16keYyAPb)
2. http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/it-business/3251386/sarah-palin-says-target-wikileaks-julian-assange-like-the-taliban/ (http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/it-business/3251386/sarah-palin-says-target-wikileaks-julian-assange-like-the-taliban/)
3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqtIafdoH_g (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqtIafdoH_g)

The Privacy issue demands some rational consideration. It really isn't a privacy issue when you boil it down. The issue is whether or not the PPCA supports an organization that does not exercise discrimination in what it chooses to report on. Wikileaks was not specifically looking to violate personal privacy rights but the very nature of their organization sometimes necessitates it.

Personally this one kinda stumps me, I am not sure were I stand on this.

My personal take on it is more pragmatic then I usually like to be. I don't see this as being something which aligns with what I see the PPCA being about. HOWEVER, I really really like wikileaks and I really really like what they are doing. I really want to see wikileak survive and continue to undermine the nation-state's ability to conceal their activities.

It is also VERY natural for people to associate wikileaks with the pirate party. I don't think there has been a single time where I spoke to people about the pirate party were someone has not mentioned wikileaks.

I, for one, would support a PPCA statement of wikileaks and an subsequent sanctioned demonstration in Calgary against Tom Flanagan. We could also set up a donation jar for wikileaks at the demonstration since Assange is constantly saying that he needs more cash to continue on which all these attacks.

Which is not just a violation of our principle of protecting privacy, it's a violation of what is in Canada at least a constitutional right: freedom of association.

While Wikileak might have resulted from government's tight control of the press or less vigilant press nowadays, I feel like there is no real revelation on the content that are being released. It is more gossip type stuff.

It is one thing to release revealing information about government malpractice but it is another to arbitrarily release irrelevant private conversation. It does run counter to our privacy policy. IMHO.

Steve, if you feel strongly about this, why don't you make a motion of it at the December 19th meeting (https://www.pirateparty.ca/forum/index.php?topic=562.0)? I know some people strongly support your position, and it would be nice to have a discussion on the matter.


That applies to the most recent series of leaks, but the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs were important. Furthermore, they've done a pretty impressive job of indirectly exposing the press for its pro-government anti-free speech bias.

Thinks of it like this, if someone writes a Wikipedia article that violates privacy rights does the PPCA no longer support wikipedia? If a leaked cable appears on a torrent site, do we consider torrent sites to be against the fundamentals of the PPCA?

The implicit message of calling their site wikileaks is that they are not the arbiters what they release.

But Wikipedia has mechanisms in place to recall information improperly released, including permanent deletion of personal information. Wikileaks has no such ability, and therefore has an obligation to exercise more care in choosing what to release—and choose they do. They review submitted information to determine its significance before leaking it, and they have also more recently deferred to major news organizations to determine what is unacceptably dangerous or compromising to release. This being the case, failing to exercise due diligence in protecting the personal information of private individuals is reckless to say the least.

If this is true then I agree, don't suppose you have a source to verify?

I agree wikileaks causes some harm but its almost a situation of 'for the better good'.

Once the fiasco is over hopefully the impact will be large enough to put some real moral responsibility into the government.

I agree with you 100% in that the BNP membership leak was a violation of personal privacy, even if they are a dangerous fascist group. However it has been two years since this leak, and Wikileaks has released a lot of extremely important information since the BNP membership leak, including Internet censorship lists, JSP 440 (government instructions for avoiding information leaks), 570,000 intercepts of messages sent on the day of the September 11th attacks (Bradley Manning commented that they were obvious NSA messages), the Baghdad airstrike video Collateral Murder (showing questionable military behaviour bordering on clear efforts to cover up the facts), the Afghan War Diaries, and the Iraq War Logs (both of the latter two showed that our governments were willing to lie about the amount of civilian deaths). That's not even all they've leaked, just stuff off the top of my head. The stuff I've mentioned is certainly not arbitrary conversation or "gossip type stuff." I'll assume trailblazer11's mention of "gossip" is with relevance to the recent diplomatic cables leak, to which I would argue: As a supporter of open government I believe this information should be available for all to see. Why should governments be able to have discussion behind a veil of secrecy when they are clearly willing to twist facts and lie to us? You either have open government or not. The Internet and (by extension) Wikileaks, allows for forced government transparency rather than an illusionary sense of openness.

Do be a favour and quote where I claimed to represent the Pirate Party of Canada. There has clearly been a miscommunication that I would like to fix. Furthermore, I never said that Wikileaks was a "'beacon of freedom of speech'" and if you believe it is in fact "the opposite" I would appreciate if you would expand upon that idea, because it almost seems like you're calling a website that releases classified documents "the opposite [of free speech]" which is rather silly in my opinion.

I wouldn't say Wikileaks is reckless. The groups claims to review each document "line by line" before releasing them and additionally, Wikileaks has approached both the Pentagon and Amnesty International for assistance in releasing the documents and redacting personal information from them. Both organizations refused. I agree with Assange when he referred to Amnesty International as "people who prefer to do nothing but cover their asses" with relevance to Wikileaks and the release of documents.

 Ron Paul has gained more of my respect, and he had a good amount of it before.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/ron-paul-what-wikileaks/

In a article provided by The New York Times:


WikiLeaks provided the information in advance to NYT, The Guardian, and Der Spiegel to give them the opportunity to sort through the data, choose what information would be too damaging to publish, and where personal information needed to be redacted. They no doubt have statements on Twitter and Facebook to that effect, but they've been very active since the release of the cables and it would take a good deal of work to come up with their remarks from some months ago.


I don't think anyone has argued that none of their leaks have served a public good, and indeed I believe that the majority of leaked material has done so. Even some of the diplomatic cables have contained important pieces of information for citizens of a supposed democracy. However, they also contained a great deal of personal information that never should have seen the light of day. If we are to support them, it would have to be with some very significant reservations.


Do you really think they expected either of those organizations to go along with the idea? If they really wanted support they would have gone to EFF. Approaching the Pentagon and Amnesty was them “covering their asses”.


Cool it. This is a place for rational discussion. Please behave respectfully towards those with differing viewpoints.

 I'm entitled to my opinion on the BNP just as you are. However, because their ideology is entirely irrelevant to this discussion I'm going to drop the subject on this note: The BNP is racist, violent, sensationalistic, and I find them absolutely disgusting. Wikipedia includes fascism as a part of the BNP's ideology, and cites six references supporting that statement. If the British National Party interests you, I recommend checking it out. Moving on, I would argue that while Wikileaks has in the past violated the right to privacy individuals should possess, the recent trend of extremely ted the right to privacy individuals should possess, the recent trend of leaking information with serious potential political ramifications and important information that should be available to the public warrants considering supporting them. Furthermore, Wikileaks did not violate anyones freedom of association. That would have technically, be done by the employers and society within the UK. The former doing so demonstrates a problem with the State not protecting the individual's freedom of association. Lastly, I didn't issue a press release. You're mistaken.


 Well, Canadian politics is largely influenced by American politics but aside from that I had previously stated that no political party in North America had openly supported Wikileaks before, so an outspoken member of the republicans and speculated 2012 presidential candidate supporting Wikileaks seemed relevant.


 What personal information are you referring to? We have to keep in mind that these leaks are arguably evident as to how information flows in the digital age, and it's quite likely that unless governments seriously secure their methods of diplomatic communication this information will continue to be public, but even then there is no such thing as a completely secure network that is connected to the Internet especially when you add human stupidity to the equation. Shit, if I recall correctly Gary McKinnon broke into US military systems with a perl script that looked for blank passwords. But of course you're completely correct that there would have to be significant reservations if PPC was to release a statement (partially) supporting the actions of Wikileaks, there would have to be reservations. These reservations would have to be considered carefully though, seeing as it would be rather foolish for PPC to look as though it believed the notion that information such as this can be controlled and yet it would be hypocritical for PPC to not support the individual's right to privacy. I think if this is to be considered, contacting Wikileaks and asking for their assistance in the creation of of the release would be something to seriously consider, even if only to ask for the names of the documents detailing personal information (since they have combed through it line by line).


 I think that while they didn't likely expect either of these organizations to go along with the idea it's arguable that this may have been considered a possibility with Amnesty International given that Assange and Wikileaks had previously won the Amnesty International media award in the catagory "new media." Even then, while EFF has been involved in a coalition that previously protested a lawsuit against Wikileaks and Dynadot, it's uncertain whether or not EFF would have agreed to actually being involved with the leaking or processing of the documents themselves, especially since the EFF is based in the United States. Though for the most part I agree with you.

I'm with you there.


And you think the leak of personal information didn't contribute to that at all? It would be like if the UK government published the name and address of every sex offender, then acted surprised by the mob lynchings. Oh wait, they already do that. Doesn't excuse irrational behaviour just because it's popular, though.


As has been previously mentioned, the BNP list and certain of the diplomatic cables, among others.


We don't need their help with drafting press releases. What position we take and how we react will be decided by the Federal Council and members of the Pirate Party, no one else.

There is no evidence that the BNP is a racist/facist organization - because wikipedia says so, doesn't make it true.
I've seen the BNP website and their policy, and I fail to see anything racist or even close to fascism - therefore they are mainly nationalist.

If you're going to issue the PPCA an ultimatum concerning your continued membership, you may as well leave. Ultimatums do not contribute to the pool of knowledge and information. Additionally, as mentioned previously, if any statement of support were to be made, it would need to be highly restrictive to the portion of Wikileaks that the general membership may be in support of (and that's where I think your opinions can best come to light). I'm sorry if you feel as though you're under attack on this issue, as I'm sure it is not by intent. Mikkel has taken his patient time to push in either direction on this issue, both for you and for Steve at various points. I'd appeal to you to not become passionate about this issue, one that I believe will ultimately be forgotten in everyone's eyes in a month or two, and redact your ultimatum.

Although the individual opinion is important, the PPCA will not be held captive to one individual's opinion when they threaten to quit otherwise. You're here because you want to be, and because you want to effect change within the purview of the range of issues that the PPCA covers.  If you would like to have more influence, I'd recommend running for a seat on our Federal Council. If you want to be the boss, you're welcome to make a motion to have a confidence vote against Mikkel and then run for Leader, but the childish nature of putting forth the above ultimatum immediately puts me and many others well out of your camp, even if someone weren't overly impressed with your competition and may have found some of your views in the past to be interesting.

My personal view is that Wikileaks should get off the stage and hand over the microphone. Their "release" is just distracting people everywhere from the real issues that are affecting global and local economies and people. I wouldn't be surprised if Wikileaks were being fed the information purposely to distract the public from real issues, but that's a conspiracy theory and bears no basis in fact, and is why I haven't brought it up prior.

Again, Biogrand and Steve, I encourage you both to take a step back, calm yourselves, and think about whether your actions and statements are really what you want to say concerning this issue. I would also ask that you move beyond your opinions on this matter, apologize for upsetting one another, and help move the party forward with the more important tasks before us.

Thank-you.

Strange to find opinions as Biogrand's in our camp.

I am not very active member but logged in to see what is the position of PPCA on Wikileaks matter.

Surprisingly I see no official statement - will there be one, or PPCA will keep silent?

Thanks.

From the route the thread has travelled, there probably will be a statement of some sort. How it will be worded is a different matter entirely, and I don't think it will happen until after the General Meeting on the 19th.

Wikileaks is a very touchy topic and you're likely to find opinions across the entire spectrum, regardless of which party's doors you walk through. Although I love the disclosure of information, I don't love that it block out more pressing matters that should be handled now. The latest bastion of released cables is hardly surprising, but people are glued to it and ignoring just about everything else. Hell, most of those cables have no need to have been marked confidential in the first place.

Rintaran, thank you for the quick reply.

I mostly share your opinion on wikilieaks case.

But the fact is that want it or not, it already IS a hot public topic - and for PPCA to not address it in any way will be rather hide-your-head-in-the-sand and pretend nothing is going on stance (and as was already mentioned, missed opportunity for more media exposure).
If the eventual-statement-to-be appears with huge delay (months etc) there is a chance to be not only inadequate, but funny as well.

Not sure what are the other pressing mattters, but imho public image is one of the most important aspects of a party.

Cheers.

I am sure we can work something out. Biogrand, our party is bound to have lots of disagreements on issues since we are encouraging free flow of information and non restrictive platform on a lot of issues. Hope you don't quit because of one disagreement. The debate is far from over.

Personally, I think we can work something out. Here is one example of what our statement can say. Note, this is just a personal statement not official or anything. Just exploring ways we can deal with this.

The Wikileak controversy shows that when government stifle information and mislead people, people result to extra ordinary means to seek out information denied to them by a government who is supposed to be serving them. PPCA recognize the importance of protecting the citizen's private information and would work to ensure openness and transparency of government records and activities. It encourages the government to work with Wikileak who have volunteered to allow government's review of the documents prior to its release. It also condemns any government officials from making statement that could be construed as encouraging violence and murder just as it condemns any individual who talks about assassination and utter death threat against a person or government official. It also opposes government harassing and libelling an individual's reputation through unsubstantiated claims and extra legal means.

---

Hope this will encourage discussion to find common ground rather than people buckling down on their respective position.

I would also like to see at least a statement in support of Wikileaks.

Even if there's consensus to help host them, we simply don't have the resources or ability to do that right now.

That's a private blog, not a spokesperson for WikiLeaks.


Yes we do. Hosting a mirror is not difficult or expensive.

https://www.pirateparty.ca/uncategorized/on-wikileaks

ic. Did not realize it's just mirror. Torrent would be a great tool for distributing their files. Looks like they already did and have released a 1.3 GB file with 256 bit encryption. The key will be released in the event that Mr. Assange is arrested. The file includes those that they have chose not to release to protect the lives of spies and soldiers.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/assange-threatens-to-release-entire-cache-of-unfiltered-files/article1825922/

Would the U.S. government step up their crackdown on Torrent sites just as they did against Torrent-Finder and few others last week? Not that it would matter. It is a futile effort on the U.S. government part.

Another reason I have reservation about how we voice our support is we are a political party and cannot be seen as explicitly supporting hacking. However, revelation like the fact that the Spanish copyright law was written by the U.S. are fair game IMHO. Wikileak on a lot of instances replaced the job of what media used to do back when investigative journalism were done by journalist who risked their lives to expose government's malpractice. So on matters relating to government actions, Wikileaks are acting like a journalist. They did not do the hacking themselves but are merely releasing information given to them by an insider. Some government agency protect whistle-blower for the purpose of encouraging exposé of malpractice (e.g. The Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act). However on matters where a private citizen's information is released without their consent, then it depends on the value of the information in relation to keeping the government honest. If the individual is not involved in wrong doing then their name should be blocked out. We can maybe release a statement to that effect if we are to support Wikileaks for keeping government accountable. Although for the latter case, judging the value of information and individual's involvement in some instances might be too subjective.

The way I see it, a Statement of Support regarding Wikileaks from the PPCA does not have to be black or white. We can support what they have done with the Iraq War Logs and CableGate, and distance ourselves from actions that run counter to Canadian Constitutional Rights or Party Platform. We cannot, however, remove offending material from a mirror.

We can also include in our statement specific support for our Pirate Party brethren in other countries who are running mirrors (as long as it does not violate their countries' laws).

Officially State Support for Wikileaks +1
Mirror Wikileaks  -1

http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-parties-supply-wikileaks-with-much-needed-servers-101205/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Torrentfreak+%28Torrentfreak

Saw that our position will be put to vote. Please also put to vote whether we should offer to mirror. I would certainly be voting in favour.

Already on the agenda.

https://www.pirateparty.ca/forum/index.php?topic=589.0

awesome! I'll try to join the IRC meeting.

Indeed. You are completely correct.
My apologies, Mikkel. I didn't mean to suggest we contact Wikileaks and involve them in the creation of a press release or for help constructing our position. I was only suggesting it as an option for if at some point we needed to comb through the copious amount of documents Wikileaks has released.
As I said before, I have absolutely no desire to further discuss this issue within this thread. If you would like to discuss it, perhaps this discussion would be better in the Political Discussion board. Anyway, I apologize for upsetting you.
As far as the notion that a political party cannot explicitly support breaking into computer systems goes, I agree with you. However, while these actions clearly result in increased government transparency, most of the population doesn't have enough of an understanding of the concept for hacking to be mentioned in the press release, at least in my opinion. Also, I feel that specifically mentioning information we feel should not be included in the releases could be viewed as censorship by many people (n addition to subjectivity), and puts PPC on thin ice. I think Mikkel said it best in the Wikileaks Special Meeting thread. All we need to do is "[maintain] the reservation that personal information should not be needlessly compromised by leaked information."

Wikileaks' is a perfect representation of the power of the internet to restore democracy. The potential for Wikileaks to make positive chain is so enormous, we can't judge them on these, the last, or the next leaks alone. How the site works is why it must be protected. Techno-Journalism could save humanity from our corruptable plutocrat overlords.

I'm glad this is being put to a vote in the party, but if we don't follow the precedent set by the Swedish Pirate Party and strongly support wikileaks I'm not sure if we're even worth a shake in this political game.

Allow me to reiterate my comments made introducing debate at the meeting this evening:

Positive change Wikileaks has Influenced:

• * Leaked the ACTA discussion papers that were instrumental in the formation of our party's ideals.
• * The media attention has re-invigorated an old debate about press freedom.
• * Silvio Berlusconi faces a vote of non confidence Dec 14th based on corruption allegations in the new cables.
• * The American people can now be aware of the secret war in Yemen.
• * The world knows that Hilary Clinton authorized illegal spying on UN diplomats.
• * Influenced the outcome of an election in kenya
• * Although it goes against our privacy platform here, leaking the BNP membership list severely decreased the membership of it, which weakened a racist and fairly awful party in the UK.
• * Assange just saying that they had files on bank of america lowered stock value the next day, which shows the political sway they have.

Wikileaks has released more confidential information to the public since they started than the mainstream media has in it's entire run. I know you seem to have a problem with Wikileaks yourself, voting down my comment and criticizing my posts in both WL threads, but it's a futile debate for you to say that they can't make change, or that they haven't made change.

These real life verifiable world changing events show amazing potential. Now, if anyone anywhere feels like the data they have access to shows corruption or is in the public's interest, they can reliably anonymously give it to an organization who will release it and protect their identity. It's getting harder for whistle blowers to get that kind of protection, particularly in third world nations, and its because of this that Wikileaks is extremely important and must be protected.

As a side note: When people vote down a decent, reasonable comment, just because they don't agree with it, that is major weak chips.

And your on the other end of the spectrum not seeing any positive. I think your finished your input on the topic. Your going on and on is turning people away from voting your way.

Hey everyone,

I have a couple things to say. Well I had a lot to say, but Steve Henderson and Mikkel Paulson said a lot of it before I had the chance LMAO.

First, I'm going to have to man up and admit I haven't heard of the Pirate Party of Canada... I am a 26 year old web developer, long-time pirate and I remember Napster (HEH!) yet I have never heard of this Party ^_^

Second, I will also admit that I only took notice of WikiLeaks as the campaign to censor them began. As a web developer, I took great offense to the idea of internet censorship. With that being said, I heard nothing of this British National Party incident LOL and really I don't think that's even of issue here... I don't care what they're leaking. I don't care who is leaking it. It could all be FUD for all I care. To take hosting away, domains away, sieze bank accounts, withdraw online payment services as well as credit card services when the organization hasn't broken any laws, nobody has been formerly charged or has even had a trial yet... That's when I care. That's when ALL pirates, at the very least, should care! Think about it for 5 minutes, seriously... If they can do it to WikiLeaks why can they not use the same premise to bring down the Pirate Bay, THIS website, or ANY OTHER site that the government doesn't like!

Now with my 2 points... You should put together the 3rd easily, but just in case, here it is:

You, more than ANY group, should be outraged by this attempt to censor WikiLeaks and remove it from the internet. More than anybody, Pirate Party's of the world should feel very, very threatened by the premise trying to be set during all this. You should waste no time in proclaiming your support for Net Neutrality and Freedom of the Press! By doing so, you can get your party's NAME IN THE CANADIAN NEWS! ^_^

"Any attention is good attention" or something :D

 - michealPW.

Many of us are outraged, I myself am very unhappy. I hope it shows in the upcoming voting results on whether we choose to support Wikileaks or not.

 I'm optimistic

You said it right Micheal