[JeanC]

Good way to get on the NSA and CIA watch lists.
Don't be idiots - there's no advantage to the party to mirror this shit and these are not the kind of people who "need our help".
Please produce the email where Assange has asked the Pirate Parties for assistance.

J

First, this is not "shit". You may agree or disagree with WikiLeaks, but calling it shit achieves nothing.
Second, I wouldn't be surprised that the Party is already on the NSA and CIA lists and also on the CSIS list. A Party like the Pirate Party of Canada represents a potential threat to the powers that be and as such its activities are most probably watched carefully.
Finally, no, I am not aware of any email that mr. Assange would have sent to the Pirate Parties for assistance.

[Joshua Doucet]

A few things to note.

Wikileaks is clearly expressing the extreme degree of free press. That is fine with me, in fact there has yet to be any link made between Wikileaks and negative effects on the Iraq/Afghanistan war. Lately all I've seen is politicians getting burned for being less than perfect.

Pirate parties around the world have supported Wikileaks, there isn't any reason we should be different after all we stand for the same core principles.

Then there is another matter of the U.S government throwing their weight against different areas of the internet to get things like Limewire and Wikileaks shut down.. I'm 100% against internet censorship and we are all for open internet. It isn't open when Wikileaks was getting shut down. Heck its borderline illegal that they are still alive by way of mirror sites. That is a sign of the internet fighting back.

Supporting wikilinks is making a stand for internet neutrality. Not just helping burn some dirty people.

PS: The Pirate Party isn't on any agency radar either way.

[Mikkel Paulson]

Pirate parties around the world have supported Wikileaks, there isn't any reason we should be different after all we stand for the same core principles.

Nor is there any reason we should be the same. We're not a member of Pirate Parties International and have no formal ties to any other Pirate Party worldwide. We are the only people who have any authority to dictate our policy.

Supporting wikilinks is making a stand for internet neutrality. Not just helping burn some dirty people.

No it's not. WikiLeaks has nothing to do with net neutrality, aside from being added to child porn as the list of excuses copyright lobby groups can use to advocate censorship.

[monolithdigital]

All I know is if we decide to leave wikileaks out of our policy, I for one will return my card. Everything I enjoyed about the party, and the reasons I joined up were linked to open access to information, and if the worry is about losing 'credibility' then this party will be no different in my eyes than any other one in Canada, which is too afraid of ruffling a few feathers for and idea that is right.

I'm not concerned about what Europe is doing, and no Canadian laws have been broken here, What I am concerned about is people in the PPoC thinking more about it's own survival than pressing an idea into the Canadian spirit. That an voters like me, who never bothered to vote in their 20s because what they voted for and what they got afterward are different things, mostly because a party (in my case, liberal) decided that polling numbers were more important than their ideas that inspired.

[Jay Frank]

I was an advocate of supporting the Pirate Bay when it was shut down and the sweed PP helped out....
Leadership here decided it was a bad idea...looking back - they were right.
Wikileaks is no different.
They don't need our help so why offer it?
If we did - it would look like a PR stunt to me and frankly....i'd rather you guys stay off the SS lists.

J

[securr]

I just want to address Jay for a second, as you've stated that twice already. Wikileaks does, in fact, need as much help as they can muster. They've had their accounts frozen, Visa and Mastercard are no longer accepting payments to WIkileaks (though they do still allow people to donate to groups affiliated with the KKK, ironically) and their server infrastructure is under continued assault. Wikileaks needs all the help they can get. Not only in terms of raw technical and monetary support, but in public support as well.

As for your comparison to the Pirate Bay, it's not exactly an apt one. For one thing, as far as we know, everything Wikileaks has engaged in thus far has been legal. If Wikileaks is charged under the espionage act, most legal scholars agree that the interpretation of the act needed to facilitate a conviction would lead to disastrous consequences for mainstream investigative journalism. It's not just Wikileaks that is under threat here, but journalists everywhere that seek to expose government corruption. If their work is made illegal because of a precedent setting case against Wikileaks, the chances of anyone taking the kinds of risks that people like Daniel Ellsberg or even Rupert Murdoch's father did ever again will be considerably lower. You need to think long term here.

All I know is if we decide to leave wikileaks out of our policy, I for one will return my card. Everything I enjoyed about the party, and the reasons I joined up were linked to open access to information, and if the worry is about losing 'credibility' then this party will be no different in my eyes than any other one in Canada, which is too afraid of ruffling a few feathers for and idea that is right.

Mono, I think that's premature. I agree that I will be seriously disappointed if we choose not to support Wikileaks, and I think it will be a rather uncomfortable black mark as the controversy begins to settle down and we start gaining some perspective on the situation, but Mikkel is holding this vote (via a snap meeting at that) in order to further and strengthen the principles of open government and open democracy. If the party as a whole votes note to support Wikileaks, that decision, wrong and short sighted as it would be, has to be respected. We are not going to be any different than what currently resides in Parliament if the first couple of big decisions we have to make as a group are arrived at by suspending, or rejecting, the democratic process. That's what closed politics is, and it should not be a part of the PPoC's open government policy.

In short, the hard and painful rule of democracy is this: It's not so fun when it screws you. Nevertheless, you still have to respect the machine.

[Joshua Doucet]

Securr you better be at the meeting. Your arguments would be very helpful in favor of Wikileaks.

Mono, I agree that it'll be a disappointment. But that is the nature of democracy., The majority wins and sometimes its not the best outcome but the best thing to do is respect it and win the next battle.

I have no idea how the debate will go and which way the vote will come out. I think the outcome will be decided by the arguments for a lot of members.

It is also worth noting that every online poll I've seen about Wikileaks has been in favor of it. Despite being slammed by the various Governments and by extension the media. Most the polls I've seen are from the CBC website which top about 70% in favor of Wikileaks and considering that its a Canadian news source read by Canadians and voted on by Canadians, you can see at least from a poll of a few thousand people, the majority of Canadians support Wikileaks.

[securr]

Securr you better be at the meeting. Your arguments would be very helpful in favor of Wikileaks.

I have a South African syrah just for the occasion.

[monolithdigital]

I wouldn't say so. It's the exact message we have been trying to get out since our inception. To distance ourselves from it makes us no different than the other parties that I used to support, and now disdain. While the language is strong, it should be in my opinion. If it's about just making another political party, and not holding an ideal, it makes the only difference between us and any other party just a smaller base.

It's like securr mentioned. Nothing illegal, but highly embarassing. Mainstream news articles cling onto only the sensationalist articles, so even now their impact is being mitigated by the bottom line. IT's neccisary, and we need to be a part of it.

[Concerned Citizen]

I think we should support wikileaks only in terms of mirroring what they have available. That would send a strong enough message we support transparency while not financing what may or may not fall into a legal grey area.

[monolithdigital]

Agreed. However, the only grey area I have seen (and this is only because of my job) is that I am unauthorized to view classified documents on an unclas system, and since these cables are considered secred, it would be a security breach. The talk about legality is a stretch, at best. (unless you are the one who leacked the documents in the US)

Remember, the definition of a secret document is one that in all probably likelyhood could cause serious damage to the national interest. Having said that, it's only their distribution among governmental agencies and citizens of that nation who are held accountable to this law. The rest is just fearmongering.

[Jeff Coleman]

Just wanted to add my comments from the meeting here:

I am in favour of mirroring Wikileaks for the following reasons:

1)As Falkvinge has pointed out in Sweden, action is an essential difference in the role of a pirate party.
2)As can be seen by comparing deCSS with AACS "09 F9 11", scale matters considerably. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controversy and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_v._Reimerdes
3)Wikileaks do actually have the potential to affect us more directly than we might think, as in http://bit.ly/ieG90d
4)Regarding cost, we are over 2000 strong.  If we decide to mirror the site, we should back up that decision with the finances to follow through without burdening Nuitari
5)Since posting a youtube video of your kids singing happy birthday is also a violation of copyright, concern that the publishing of leaked content be illegal is misplaced.  At worst this would be a very principled move of civil disobedience, and any action taken against us as a result could only help us.
6)Being brave enough to take a risky action is the point of the action.  Point 5 applies to non-copyright action taken against us as a result of such a move as well--this type of attention will only cause well-deserved coverage of our party and sympathy for it.


Taking everything raised so far into consideration, I believe we should mirror Wikileaks.


Sincerely,
Jeff Coleman

[Concerned Citizen]

Now to use an  image macro based on a movie...

[Mikkel Paulson]

From tonight's debate:

[22:42] <+MikkelPaulson> firstly, as Joshua comment[ed], WikiLeaks already has over a thousand mirrors already in operation, so our participation would be entirely symbolic, although it is well within our technical means to do so
[22:42] <+MikkelPaulson> however, this isn't as simple as putting our money where our mouth is
[22:42] <+MikkelPaulson> it also has potential to lead to legal trouble for the party in the future, depending how authorities react to those hosting mirrors
[22:42] <+MikkelPaulson> if that happens, it is possible that we will be deregistered as a party, since Elections Canada requires that a party assert that its primary purpose is to contest elections, not to fight legal battles on behalf of foreign organizations
[22:42] <+MikkelPaulson> also, hosting a mirror would constitute a blanket endorsement for EVERYTHING that WikiLeaks does, now and in the future, and not only that which we agree with
[22:42] <+MikkelPaulson> our initial motion included the reservation that WikiLeaks should NOT be compromising personal information, which many members have spoken strongly in favour of, even going so far as to move amendments to reinforce that
[22:42] <+MikkelPaulson> but some of the material that we would be facilitating the sharing of is just that: PERSONAL INFORMATION that should never have been released because of its compromising nature to private individuals
[22:42] <+MikkelPaulson> which means that the action of maintaining a mirror would be contradictory to the statement included in the first motion, as well as in large part to OUR OWN IDEALS as a party
[22:42] <+MikkelPaulson> furthermore, I submit that WikiLeaks' actions as a whole are detrimental to our goals, as their actions have resulted in governments tightening control over information, not willingly releasing it to the public
[22:42] <+MikkelPaulson> as a political party, our prerogative is to encourage information to be willingly released by the government itself, not to be stumbled upon by third parties
[22:42] <+MikkelPaulson> therefore, I encourage all members to vote against this motion, as I believe it would be ultimately detrimental to the party as a whole

Bottom line: going along with this may have a seriously detrimental effect on our standing as a political party, forget about press attention and “nutting up”.

[Ayes]

The Pirate Party is a reactionary party. We are from the Pirate Bay, and we represent the internet.

If rehosting wikileaks could get us in legal trouble, that sucks, but one less symbolic mirror isn't a big deal.

It is however most important that we stand up for the free press. Wikileaks is a journalist organization.


Quote from the American Civil Liberties Union, which I agree with wholeheartedly, and I think the PPCA should too:
"The Wikileaks phenomenon — the existence of an organization devoted to obtaining and publicly releasing large troves of information the U.S. government would prefer to keep secret — illustrates just how broken our secrecy classification system is. While the Obama administration has made some modest improvements to the rules governing classification of government information, both it and the Bush administration have overclassified and kept secret information that should be subject to public scrutiny and debate. As a result, the American public has had to depend on leaks to the news media and whistleblowers to know what the government is up to.

Without whistleblowers such as Wikileaks who disclosed illegal activity, we wouldn’t know, among other things, about:

* the CIA’s secret overseas prisons
* the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping program
* that civilian casualties from the war in Iraq are much higher than was thought
* that U.S. troops were going into battle without adequate body armor

There is certainly a narrow category of information that the government should be able to keep secret in order to protect national security and for other purposes. But the reality is that much more information has been classified by the U.S. government than should be, and information is often classified not for legitimate security reasons, but for political reasons — to protect the government from embarrassment, to manipulate public opinion or even to conceal evidence of criminal activity. When too much information is classified, it becomes more and more difficult to separate the information that should be made public from the information that is legitimately classified.

What the Wikileaks phenomenon means in the longer term — and how the government will respond — is still open to question. But two things are already clear. First, to reduce incentives for leaks, the government should provide safe avenues for government employees to report abuse, fraud and waste to the appropriate authorities and to Congress. Second, the Obama administration should recommit to the ideals the president invoked when he first came to office: “The government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears.”

Democracy, after all, depends on transparency. The American public has a right to know what the government is doing in its name."