This, for me, is where greasemonkey comes in.

This is a good moment for a slight aside. Greasemonkey is fantastically revolutionary. It allows you the user to define some stuff (javascript) that should run (client side) on a webpage after it loads. I am strongly of the opinion that every website in the world should be devoid of style, and formatting, and simply consist of well marked up code requiring all users to use their own user scripts to turn into something usable. A minimum bar to using the web, as it were. I’m not sure this will catch on…

So, there are things Moodle does that I wish it did slightly differently. So this is where greasemonkey comes in. I write some scripts to make it behave differently for me.

Backup

When creating a backup of a Moodle course there are a series of pages with checkboxes with different options. I always use the same options – which aren’t the defaults. So a little bit of javascript later and each page will tick or untick according to my preference every time I use the backup feature. With ‘next’ buttons appearing at the bottom of the page I even made the page scroll to the bottom for me.

Reset

As with backups, I want reset to use my defaults, so a script does this for me too.

Advanced search

When searching for users in Moodle the default filter is the user full name, with other fields hidden. When showing the other fields there are so many it obscures the ones I want (email and username).

A tiny bit of scripting and application of some CSS rules, and now the default shown filters include email and username.

Improving assignments

When students submit assignments the assignment submission box lists their names, with their files etc. It does not list some of their other more useful profile fields. For handy user identification we populate the field ‘department’ via ldap with student ID numbers. Unfortunately this field is near invisible in the VLE and not much use.

A bit of (rather complicated) javascript and jquery later, we now look at the name column and get the URL it links to. This URL includes the student’s Moodle database number. We then do an ajax background request to the edit profile for the given user which exposes the department field. We return back that id, and strip it down to just the 9 digit number. We then insert a new cell in the table following the name containing the students ID number.

This isn’t fast, as each new cell requires an ajax call pulling back a whole page of Moodle (slow), and then stripping it down to the bit we want. But this is a darn sight faster than copy/pasting what’s on the screen, dumping into a spreadsheet, and then manually looking up student numbers and hoping you don’t have two students in the same course with the same name.

Non-greasemonkey javascript

In addition to the above I also use javascript in bookmarks to do certain things. When in a Moodle course if I want to make a backup I can hunt down where the backup link is. Or I can just click my ‘Moodle Backup’ bookmark.

javascript:(function(){window.location=window.location.toString().replace(/course\/view/,'backup/backup')})();


This is rather trivial, it just changes the URL replacing ‘course/view’ with ‘backup/backup’. So for the URL https://subdomain.domain.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=192 it takes me to https://subdomain.domain.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=192 which is of course the exact right place for taking a backup.

I use a similar bookmarklet script for Moodle course resets.

javascript:(function(){window.location=window.location.toString().replace(/course\/view/,'course/reset')})();


However finally it did, and on 30th July 2009 the Pirate Party UK became an official ‘registered with the Electoral Commission’ political party. [1]

2009-07-30 PPUK registration

The first I knew of this was a Slashdot article posted on 13th August 2009 [2]. I was abroad on my Summer holiday at the time, but that didn’t stop me from immediately following the link and signing up.

A few days later I was already trying to get involved and help. I created a Facebook group for South East members (which was eventually replaced with a Facebook page).

I am proud to be able to say that on September 5th 2009 I was at the Treehouse talk [3] [4], the first official public speech by then leader (and current Governor) Andy Robinson. I remember the gentle teasing on the train ride up (with Tuoni and Semanticx) for bringing along a flask of tea. The three of us had our own custom black, name on the back, polo shirts made up which receive compliments to this day.

© (NC-BY) Andy Broomfield

I vividly remember all of us attending (especially those proudly wearing PPUK-logo polo shirts and no coats) shivering as the evening set in to chill us to the bone. Finally, I remember the satisfaction of being able to drink hot tea from my flask! That evening I posted the following to Facebook:

Good meeting today. Turnout could have been larger, but I predict that in a few years time the number of people who claim to have ‘frozen in the tree house’ will be significantly more than really did.

 

In May 2010 I decided to become even more involved. Nominations opened for Regional Admin Officers and I nominated myself for the South East vacancy [5] [6]. I held that position until 2011 when, after structural changes, the RAO positions were removed.

That same May nominations opened [7] for the Board of Governors for which I also nominated myself [8]. I was proud to have been elected to both offices, the latter one still held today. Proud both because of the trust I felt that members had placed in me, and proud also to know I was able to help the Pirate Party UK grow and develop.

The second half of 2010 and the first half of 2011 saw me travelling around the South East trying to stimulate regional activity through monthly meetings. Some meetings were successful, others less so. The most successful were those that combined with the London region. These tailed off late 2011 and early 2012 as RAO positions got restructured away, but have seen a resurgence recently with one of the most successful meetings yet [9].

London July 2012 PPUK Social Meeting

February 2011 saw the first ever Pirate Party UK national conference [10]. This took place in Glasgow and provided the first real opportunity for many of the active members to meet each other face-to-face and built both political and social ties. There were good talks from invited international Pirates (Pascal Gloor PP-Switzerland, and Rick Falkvinge PP-Sweden) as well as Loz (UK leader). I’m proud to also be able to say I too presented at conference, though my talk on the PPUK constitution was probably a gentle opener to allow members to catch a few extra moments of sleep.

Author delivering a presentation at PPUK 2011 national conference. © Andy Halsall

It has been a tough three years for a small group of idealists without too much real political experience trying to make a serious political party out of little more than hopes, dreams, visions of a better world, and a sprinkling of outrage.

In many ways it has been three years of pain. Birthing pains, and growing pains. We grew faster than we knew what to do with ourselves. I am sure many members were like myself who had always wanted to see a UK Pirate Party and joined immediately to make a statement of intent. Like myself I am sure many of those initial members were not sure what to do to help, and unsurprisingly at a time when we needed every member to know what needed to be done and be driven to do it we floundered as reality set in.

But we survived. While many members stayed on the periphery to observe a good number got stuck in. A few volunteered to help, got stuck in and did things, and gradually (perhaps making mistakes every step of the way) we made things work. We have had a few internal election cycles (some might say too many) and without criticism to those that came before, I think every cycle we’ve gotten stronger. Those that came before deserve praise for bringing us as far as they did, and those that came after deserve praise for dragging us further than we had gone before.

We have had successes, and we have had failures. I am saddened most when I see hard working individuals burn out and fade away because their load was not shared with others. I think we are still at that tipping point where too few do too much, but change is on the horizon. We are now teetering towards a different tipping point, the place where we now have many more volunteers and those few with the heavy loads have to try to shift that balance, negotiating the tricky challenge of taking time away from doing to spend time mentoring others on what to do.

I anticipate a period of quiet, where not quite so much work is seen to be done from the outside perspective as we internally work on a better organisation structure. But I hope this will then be followed by a rapid growth as a larger group of organised volunteers kick into gear and drive us further towards our goals.

Looking ahead, I am eagerly anticipating the PPUK 2012 national conference. This is being held in London on 16th September [11] and proposes to be a larger and more exciting event. I imagine this has a strong chance (although it will be a push) of being the last ‘intimate’ PPUK conference where it would be possible to meet everyone attending and forge friendships, as I foresee a 2013 or 2014 conference becoming so much larger and reaching 500+ attendees.

I’ve already bought my ticket and if you haven’t yet done so, do snap one up now [12] while there are still tickets available, I look forward to meeting more of my fellow Pirates.

Browsing through three years worth of subscribed forum posts one thread in particular caught my eye titled ‘BBC ignoring us’, which is certainly not something that could be said now [13]. If a measure is needed of how far we have come, perhaps this is as good as any.

[1] Announcement on the PPUK blog of the official registration of PPUK with the Electoral Commission
[2] Article on Slashdot about the official registration of PPUK
[3] Announcement on the PPUK blog of the Treehouse talk
[4] flickr image set by Andy Broomfield of the Treehouse talk
[5] Opening of RAO nominations on the PPUK forum
[6] Author’s self-nomination for RAO South East on the PPUK forum
[7] Opening of Board of Governors nominations on the PPUK forum
[8] Author’s self-nomination for Board of Governors on the PPUK forum
[9] Facebook image gallery for London July 2012 social meeting
[10] Facebook image gallery for PPUK 2011 national conference
[11] Information page for the upcoming PPUK 2012 national conference
[12] Registration page for the upcoming PPUK 2012 national conference
[13] Google search for BBC pages mentioning “Pirate Party UK”

Upon cursory inspection, that seems the case, but I hope that I can persuade readers that when you dig a little deeper there is more to the Pirate Party. I do not just mean the public Policy 2011 consultation that took place on reddit, nor the policy 2012 process that came from it. Nor am I being a little trite and referring to their three core policies of copyrights/patents, surveillance, and free speech.

Instead I refer to the general Pirate philosophy which can be a lens through which to view any policy area (Rick Falkvinge has made efforts to define his take on this general philosophy that he calls a pirate wheel). In the same way that one might summarise in few words what a liberal, a socialist, or a conservative stands for, likewise you should be able to boil down a Pirate to our few core policies. That simple definition then helps inform a perspective on a much wider policy platform. There is a difference between having a core set of policies, and for those policies to be limited in scope. The Pirate viewpoint can be applied to any policy area, and as such Pirate politics is relevent to more than just a single issue.

Yes the Pirate Party needs manifestos covering a wider range of issues when they stand for election. They have created such manifestos in the past, and will do so in the future. But when trying to get their message across to those who have not heard of them, the most important thing they need to do is explain their philosophy as simply as possible.

Barring personalities and fluctuating popularity ratings many voters label themselves politically and vote accordingly, e.g. a ‘socialist’ constituent is likely to vote for a socialist party. They (I generalise) are not always ready to delve into manifestos and look at the details. They are looking for someone who advertises their party as socialist and expect to get someone who will (e.g.) tax the rich and build a welfare state.

So I say that the Pirate Party does not need a complicated in-depth manifesto to catch the interest of the voters (though I accept that they may need that to hold on to them after they have caught them). Instead they need to have such a simple message that voters redefine themselves.

Someone labelling themselves a liberal might look at the strong Pirate stand-point on individual rights and reducing surveillance and re-label themselves a Pirate. Someone labelling themselves a conservative may look on the Pirate copyright/patent stance and see a low-interventionist free-market approach and be all for it, re-labelling themselves as a Pirate. Someone labelling themselves a socialist might look on the Pirate copyright agenda as a redistribution of wealth from the few rich copyright companies to the many poor artists and decide to re-label themselves Pirate.

The Pirate Party needs to make it easy for a vast swathe of the electorate to be able to identify themselves as agreeing with core Pirate beliefs, and being ready to politically label themselves as Pirate. That does not come from having more policies. It comes from better explaining the core of what the Pirate Party stand for, and make it as easy as possible for the electorate to extrapolate for themselves how such a philosophy would deal with more diverse policy areas.

I have a clean Moodle 2 install, and a test 1.9 -> 2.1 install, and have been frustrated by some of the changes. I should note that I am also pleased at other changes, but those things I like will get less air-time than those I don’t, ’tis the way of things.

Some of the things I don’t like are:

Category Enrolments

I have not fully understood how these differ from Moodle 1.9 yet, though I am assured they do. Firstly, site-wide and category enrolments do not work the same - I’m not quite clear yet exactly how. There is a new enrolment plugin type called ‘Category enrolments’ that seems to be involved that supposedly restores old behaviour if enabled. This interacts with the new capability ‘category:synchronised’. I believe this specifically synchronises roles at a category down into a course level. I believe it does this as a proper enrolment rather than as an ‘other user’.

What I don’t like about this is that it has changed, I don’t understand it fully, and it becomes difficult for me to ensure desired pre-existing behaviour is maintained.

Hidden Assignments

Another thing that annoys me, is the removal of ‘hidden’ role assignments, replacing them instead with the concept of ‘other users’ in a course that will have access but not be listed as a participant.

On face value this seems to make sense, but one of the way we used to use ‘hidden’ enrolments was when enrolling site-wide users. We would set someone up with Teacher permissions site-wide, and to prevent them showing up as being a Teacher on every course we’d set the role as hidden.

If someone needs site-wide permission levels there is no way to do this as an ‘other user’. Where this Teacher role is granted site-wide because there is no ‘hidden’ option, that person is then listed on every course as a Teacher.

A solution is to tweak ‘course contacts’ so that Teachers aren’t listed as Teachers of a course, or better to duplicate the Teacher role and make sure they aren’t a ‘course contact’. Where multiple roles are used in both visible and hidden ways, this means duplicating those roles and them essentially being identical in ALL WAYS except for which are listed as ‘course contacts’. These roles may then be synchronised back down into courses if ‘Category enrolments’ and the ‘category:synchronised’ capability are enabled. I could easily see this then requiring even more duplicate roles.

Viewing Enrolled Users

In a course when I view enrolled users (course administration->users->enrolled users), I can choose to filter by enrolment method, but not by role. Ditto for ‘other users’. It isn’t easy to get a quick look at who is enrolled as a Teacher. For this functionality I specifically have to use the Participants link in the People block – which doesn’t show up ‘other users’ anyway. I can click on ‘enrol users’ to get the traditional side-by-side view of those enrolled and not enrolled. But (1) there is not a separate view per role, (2) if there are ‘too many users to show’ you’re out of luck.

Display a Directory vs Folder Resource

This is one of my largest frustrations.

In Moodle 1.9 we had a the following workflow.

• Publications would update up to hundreds of course files (in a neat folder hierarchy) on a network drive,
• A script would rsync these files with a folder on the Moodle 1.9 server,
• Within an ‘all course materials’ course we would ‘display a directory’ that allowed students to navigate the neat folder hierarchy and access the hundreds of course files.
• Because these files are synched when updated, we never need to go into Moodle and delete old files and replace with new ones.

Moodle 2 have changed the way files are handled. Repositories are a new and ‘good’ way to handle files in Moodle 2. As a consequence to the ‘new way of doing things’ the ‘display a directory’ resource. This has been replaced by a ‘folder’ resource.

When creating a ‘folder’ resource there is no way to point it to a folder within a repository. If all your hundreds of files from the server sit in a file-system repository, you can one-by-one add the files to your course ‘folder’, but not in bulk. Once a file is placed in your folder from the repository it is replicated into Moodle’s database. Presumably if the original file in the repository updates, nothing happens to Moodle’s database copy, and so every time a file is updated, you need to go into the ‘folder’ to remove the old one, and add the updated one.

What is the point of a repository if we can not update documents in there, and know that Moodle is picking up the update?

What is the point of a ‘folder’ if we can’t bulk select files from the repository? And no, adding zipfiles and unzipping them into the folder is NOT a suitable alternative.

Upgrades

Yesterday saw the first upgrade of the first of our live installs, and there were mixed results.

Capability – folder:view

More ‘folder’ frustration as it turned out that in my fresh M2 install, my test M2 upgrade, and the live M2 upgrade that the capability ‘folder:view’ is not set to ‘allow’ for students. What does this mean? It means that the ‘folder’ resource, presumably intended for students, is not actually visible to students!

I don’t know if this is a default Moodle 2 setting, or just something wrong at our end – but it certainly got me kicking, screaming, and pulling my hair out about folders all over again!

Capability – course:view

Going back to my frustration with site-wide and category enrolments, imagine my frustration when everyone with our ‘College Admin’ role (site wide) who had previously been able to see all courses, was suddenly unable to see any courses! It turned out that this was because their role did not have the ‘course:view’ capability. In our other 1.9 installs this role does have this capability, so either something took it off in the upgrade or this one install didn’t have it set (I don’t believe this!).

Summary

While I am pleased at some of the new features (cohorts!) of Moodle 2 I am really disappointed in the loss of some Moodle 1.9 features.

One aspect I think that could do with some improvement in the way connect.me handles vouches, is the lack of evidence associated with each vouch. I hope I am trusted that when I vouch for someone in ‘photography’ it truly means I respect and value their photographic skills, but beyond that how do you judge that relationship? I would like the ability for each vouch to have an optional description field which is not shown by default, but that can be displayed as and when needed. This might serve a little like ebay feedback (which is another form of reputational currency).

Until there is such an option, I find this idea of blogging about who and why I have trust vouched an ideal way to explain my choices.

Social

Richard Bellingham – My first and greatest friend from University (undergraduate years). I have known Richard for many years and he is a thorough geek. I credit long nights of conversation with me for his rationalist and atheist views – though it may be fairer to note that questioning everything and re-evaluating one’s views is a natural consequence for an intelligent person leaving home and going to University. I have read some of what he was written, though as a writer some of his favoured genres (that’s something you’ll have to ask him about) don’t always appeal to me. For many years I have role-played under him as a games master, and have enjoyed myself thoroughly. He has his own style of running games, perhaps expecting too much player-led activity for the likes of some, but is far less rail-roading than others. We both studied Biosciences together, and then we both went different ways to do Masters degrees in Computing. With programming being a fond love for both of us I would much have preferred our University days to have been swapped – though I have fond memories of his early forays as a multi-threaded java programmer mixing up .run() and .start() methods.

Rhodri Broadbent (not yet signed up) – My greatest friend from my University (postgraduate years). I remember many afternoons and evenings spent at his house playing games on his Nintendo gamecube. More fondly still I remember the summer where I had my mum’s house to myself, and Rhod stayed over so we could both work intensively on our dissertation programming projects. Days and days spent programming in separate rooms, only to go through to pester the other while musing aloud on whatever the current bug was. Evenings playing Counterstrike and watching Invader Zim may have been the only things to keep us sane. Rhod’s project was a 3D game of a bird flying down an obstacle course shooting at things. Since then he has moved to Japan, working as a real games developer, and now is back in the UK with his own games company DakkoDakko.

Professional

Steve Bailey – I have worked (Uni of Kent) with Steve for several years and regard him as my friend. However I’m including him here under professional rather than social as my vouches for him are more professionally oriented. Steve and I worked closely together in learning technology. The majority of our work revolved around the open source VLE/LMS Moodle – but Steve’s interests and skills go beyond this and include lecture recording, education generally, and explain why he is an excellent educational technologist.

Mick Norman – Mick is another one of my former Unikent learning technology colleagues. I worked with him for almost as long as I have worked with Steve. I regard Mick as an expert in the use of Moodle and a wide range of other educational technologies. Mick is an avid musician and participates in orchestras and bands – though where he finds the time, I do not know! He is also a keen photographer and I am hoping to pick up some tips from him soon, perhaps over beer.

Daniel Clark – Dan is the final former Unikent colleague to make it to this list. At the time of this post the three of them are still colleagues at Unikent and I miss being their colleague nearly daily. Dan has a background in music technology, works in educational technology, as well as having broader qualifications in education. Dan is another avid photographer and musician – which is quite good as I know that in a hostage situation if I ever have to choose between Dan and Mick I can guarantee I’ll be able to keep a musical photographic former-colleague/friend. It is good to have spares!

Political

Loz Kaye (not yet signed up) – As the current Leader of the Pirate Party UK Loz is an inspiration to me with how he can find the time to be in so many different places doing so many different things. He is far from a career politician, he is one of those rare people that sees something he disagrees with and instead of sitting back grumbling about it, he takes a stand. Following him on twitter is sometimes a whirlwind-like experience as he discussed pirate politics, music composition, and various things in foreign languages I can barely comprehend. I know the PPUK is better for his involvement, and I am proud to vouch my trust in him.

Andy Halsall – Andy is another person that I am fortunate to have met through our mutual involvement in pirate politics. He is a dedicated activist who is currently the Campaigns Manager of the Pirate Party UK. I am impressed with how much he can get done, and how well he sometimes manages to delegate. I live in fear of his phone calls and emails asking me to do things … well perhaps not fear, but he’s just so difficult to say no to!

Harley Faggetter – Harley is the third member (in a row!) of the PPUK National Executive Committee to make it to this list. Out of all ten listed I’ve known Harley the least amount of time, yet it has been enough to know he is dedicated to pirate politics. I have spent many an evening in Parliament attending a debate sitting alongside Harley, whispering comments and opinions back and forth or comparing tweets.

Jack Allnutt (not yet signed up) – Jack and I have both held similar roles within PPUK. We were both elected into positions of Regional Administrative Officer and onto the Board of Governors at the same times as each other. I have got to know Jack well while working with him and know he is enthusiastic about pirate politics and making a difference.

Will Tovey (not yet signed up) – Will is one of my colleagues on the PPUK Board of Governors. He impresses me regularly not just with his interest in pirate politics but also with how ready he is to dig into boring, verbose, dense legal matters to summarise and make sense. Perhaps this shouldn’t be too surprising as he is a law student, yet it is incredibly helpful. I don’t know exactly how high his reading stack is, but I get the impression that things get added to it faster than they are taken away. That Will keeps on going is a testament to his willpower.

I have been asked why, with all the other social network sites available, did I join (and pester friends/colleagues to join) this one.

Firstly a reputation network is NOT a social network, well, not exactly. A dedicated reputation network would seek not to compete with other social networks, but instead provide a mechanism by which one proves one’s credibility. That proof can then be used in other places (social networks being one example) to support and evidence your reputation.

For example, if you were on a reputation network and had many vouches that you were eminent in the field of network security, you then might post a blog article about network security. Your readers may want to know if you’re talking nonsense or not and can check to see what your reputation is by following a link to your connect.me profile. What’s more they should be able to see who vouched for you, and determine for themselves how reliable those vouches were. If a bunch of other network security people had vouched for you, your readers could trust your blog article more than if you only had vouches from your luddite grandmother.

Why *this* one? Why not? If it fails to work, I can delete my account. If it ends up being successful, then I’ll make use of it. However such systems only work when they are used. If no-one that knows me is on there, my reputation can not be accurately judged by those that don’t know me. Hence I encourage to join those that know me in particular fields of my interest.

When you considers online services such as this the immediate concern is privacy, what they do with your data and how they respect your rights to privacy. This site has won an award for their personal data privacy policies. What this means further down the line, any site can change policies, is debatable. Therefore it is important to keep telling them how we value their current stance to ensure they stick with it.

In the post Will challenges various misconceptions, including

• courts aren’t entitled to make laws
• the HRA is all about foreign judges meddling in UK law
• criminals have no rights

Along with various clear arguments in favour of preserving the connection with the ECHR, such as

• protecting individuals from the state
• judges having more experience with the intricacies of law than politicians
• judges are less likely than politicians to be vote chasing when ruling how to apply laws

Will summarises:

Human Rights are fundamental, inalienable and indivisible rights that protect all of us, equally. Any government that wants to remove such protection is demonstrating a thirst for power that is unhealthy and dangerous in a civilised society. It is important that the human rights of any one person, even a criminal, are upheld – as soon as we say it is acceptable to take away rights from just one person, we are all put at risk.

There is also a very good and related article on the BBC News website. The article notes that having laws that were not subject to judicial review was inconceivable, that it would be a disaster for the UK to not comply with the ECHR ruling (on votes for prisoners), and how not doing so would leave the UK comparable to 1967 Greece ruled by a dictatorship.

“The only country which denounced the Convention was Greece in 1967 at the time of the dictatorship of the colonels. I cannot imagine …  that the UK, which is a great country, could be in the same situation as the colonels in 1967.”

It works on pretty much all other possible css values, but doesn’t seem to like max-width nor min-width. I can set the style to hold color or background values, or text-align, but not max-width! What gives? Why does PHP seem to have CSS max-width?

EDIT: I have since uncovered the cause of this. My text string was being passed through a Mahara function clean_html() which strips out various things, including max-width style definitions. The solution is to clean_html() before I apply my max-width and hey presto, everything works as expected.

As one of the Pirate Party members present for the excellent DEAPPG meeting (thank you!), I’ll try and respond to some of your comments Eric. I will emphasise however that my comments do not necessarily represent anyone else in the Party nor the Party itself

I’m glad you were intrigued by us. I am glad you recognise that we are willing to engage in the debate, and that we do so intelligently rather than dogmatically. Holding a polemical view doesn’t necessitate an aggressive delivery of that message. Despite the name we are a serious political party (a phrase that sometimes seems to become our catchphrase), and by that I mean both that our issues are very serious and we wish to engage with national politics in a serious way.

I am happy to leave aside issues of copyright, because despite what some say we are not a ‘single issue party’, and I’ll try to respond to the 3 things which struck you about our argument.

Impossibility of stopping leaks

Taking a position that it isn’t possible to stop leaks – in response, I believe, to a straight question of ‘is it possible?’ doesn’t necessarily equate to a position on whether leaks are inherently good or bad. It is just a simple recognition of reality. My personal view would probably depend on context to some extent in the same way as the question about lying to and/or misleading Parliament.

If a full complete and truthful answer in Parliament might cause immediate harm (such as confession of an upcoming currency devaluation) then I could accept a misleading answer as long as it was followed as soon as possible by an honest and fully explained apology. If however Parliament was mislead over something that would only cause discomfort or embarrassment (keeping secret an agreement to allow cluster bomb munition on British soil in US) then no apology would suffice for the contempt with which Parliament was treated.

Likewise I would treat leaks the same way. If a leak would cause more immediate harm than good (admittedly difficult to assess at times), with no efforts to mitigate the harm (anonymising names or waiting for a vulnerable period of time to pass) I would likely regard that specific leak as ‘bad’. If however a leak reveals information that ‘is in the public good’ (again, can be hard to assess) even if it might be diplomatically or politically embarrassing, I’d be inclined to consider the leak ‘good’. This fairly arbitrary notion of good or bad doesn’t change whether we can stop it, and it doesn’t necessarily mean it should be legal/illegal to leak.

Arguing strongly for personal privacy

There are very clear conflicts between notions of pure free speech, and the respect of privacy, and I imagine that it is a fine line to legislate. I am reminded of something I read elsewhere once upon a time (regret to not remember where) discussing the outrage in the USA at the idea of their national flag being burnt despite it being legal to do under free speech^*. The article discussed the dichotomy of this being a protected free speech while at the same time being abhorred by so many in society. The authors perspective was that the social outrage towards the flag burner was sufficient social punishment for the ‘crime’ and that the law didn’t need to provide further punishment, and thus could preserve free speech.

To my mind this is a way in which personal privacy and how to handle it could be dealt with.

Likewise legislatively there is a very clear difference between trying to criminalise the local neighbourhood gossip poking their nose into everyone’s private business, and having the position as a Government that the state should not intrude into the private lives of citizens by covering every square inch with CCTV cameras, holding DNA databases of innocent people, trying to impose national ID cards as well as integrating government databases with all sorts of personal information about us and then opening it up to everyone and their dog, and the list of government intrusions into our privacy could go on. Yes, we want our private data to be private. Yes, information can be easily leaked. Solution, stop putting all our private data into more and more government databases and start to respect our privacy as individuals.

The important thing to recognise is that it doesn’t matter if I, or you, or anyone else, thinks a leak is good or bad in terms of stopping that leak occurring in the first place. If someone is motivated to leak, they will. What is important, and needs more looking at is how you deal with leaks after the fact.

I would personally advocate in favour of a system where leaks and breaches of personal privacy can be prosecuted, because the law should not just be about what we can or can not enforce, it should also be about what we as society are asking of each other. That is exactly what I see laws as being, our social contract with each other over what we deem acceptable. I accept that leaks can be the right thing to do, I also accept that leaks can be bad, as such we need laws that are capable of prosecuting leakers when in the public good but with wiggle-room to protect whistle-blowers.

The very existence of laws to penalise leakers may be sufficient to stop those who may be inclined to leak frivolously. I personally believe that anyone that sees something bad going on and leaks despite the often harsh penalties of doing so is a hero.

Laws that punish leakers need to be crafted to accept that sometimes the public good trumps secrecy, needs to analyse motives and the intent of the leaker rather than just the embarrassment the leak may cause. Such shades of grey are hard to legislate, but we ought to aspire to manage it. We already have a system that is supposed to look at the public good before prosecuting a legal case against someone, so there is some ability to deal with the shades of grey between wrong/right before something comes to trial. I also have faith in the British public to judge between a good and bad leak.

More than any of this, I would prefer to live in a country where there were no nasty secrets being held back from the public, where the people and Parliament weren’t mislead for political/diplomatic convenience, where there weren’t any secrets that were in the public good to be leaked.

If the state should decide what is kept private

I don’t know that we ‘argued that the state did not have the right to decide what should be kept from the public’. In a sense we the public grant the state the right to make that decision. It is the state that has proven that it doesn’t respect the public to use that power fairly and responsibly. The rights of the state are rights that the public can take back. I think you call this anarchy Eric. I call it democracy.

You also mention Eric that there is a contradiction in the Pirate Party having policies that respect personal privacy while at the same time accepting and admitting that it is easier for information to spread than it is to contain it. There is no contradiction here. Recognition that information can be communicated is not acceptance that all information should be communicated. I think we all probably know people that gossip a little too freely with the private information of others. Gossiping is something we all engage in from time to time, but most people recognise that while gossiping can be irresistible, we’re not actually discussing matters of great intellectual significance, we’re not curing cancer, and we aren’t (no matter how much hot air we give out) sending rockets to the moon.

It is possible to distinguish between private and personal information about a person, and between information about the state, about that activities of government, etc. As to who should make that distinction, I agree with you Eric, it is the state. That is, the people that live in the state, the wider society, and not just those that choose to make the decisions behind closed doors. Governments should by all means have definitions of what they think should be public and secret, but those definitions should be open to society so we can choose if we agree or not. Government should then stick to those definitions and not deceive and manipulate us.

You wrote, Eric, that you put that question to us a number of times and we didn’t answer. I guess there are a number of reasons. Primarily I suspect it was because the discussion we were there to have wasn’t about the distinction between personal private information and state ‘secrets’. We were there to discuss the issue of state ‘secrets’ being put into the public domain and the clear revelation of quite how dirty some of those state secrets are. Those leaks have us question the honesty of those that purport to lead us and the real question was what should states do to deal with the threat of leaks. The answer is that states should behave with honour and dignity and have nothing to fear from such leaks. The secret face of our state should be one we aren’t ashamed to discover.

Of course, another good reason why you might not have been given an answer to your question is that some of us (or maybe just me) are new to that sort of environment and need to take some time to observe and absorb rather than actively participate right off the bat. Some of us might not be natural politicians, and tongue-in-cheek slightly, maybe that’s a good thing.

Just because one Pirate argues that all information will come out, doesn’t make that person (or others in the movement) an anarchist. Rather perhaps just a realist? I’m not sure any of us want to kill the state. As a Party we are trying to enter mainstream politics. Not to kill it from within, but to fix those problems we see. Why did you and your colleagues enter politics? Hopefully for many of you it was because you perceived a problem and wanted to fix it! As a motivation I respect that, even where I may disagree with the perceived problem and solution (though having been a life-long Labour voter maybe not as much disagreement as others might have). Likewise I hope mainstream politics will respect us in the Pirate Party for holding that same willingness to try and right those wrongs we perceive.

You are very right Eric that those ‘with political, commercial … power now have a responsibility to question their own assumptions about information, creativity, communications, [etc]‘. You are also right that Pirates need to understand people as well as technology. I worry that there is an implication that you think we don’t. I disagree. Some of us (it pains me to exclude myself) may be young and (happy to include myself) more technology aware than average, but neither of these characteristics should assume a lack of knowledge or experience with the real world. Of course some of us fit stereotypes, but many of us do not. From my reading of what you wrote you are asking us to decide if we like democratic values or regard them as irrelevant. I hope you didn’t mean it that way, but I point once more to us entering the democratic political process, as well as restating that recognition of the inevitability of something does not equate to support of it. We very much want our ideas to be part of the solution. I don’t think that will happen until a lot of the mainstream parties throw away a lot of their perceptions and truly engage with our policies.

*Burning in fact actually being the preferred way to dispose of worn US flags.

It has been a rather busy year, and so much has happened both personally and for the party.

I’ve stood for and achieved uncontested victory as the RAO for the South East. I have also stood for election to the Board of Governors where, despite a strong field, I am proud to be amongst those chosen.

This of course is only the beginning, both of these positions require a lot of time and hard work on my part, and I am grateful for the opportunity to be involved with furthering the goals of a political party that I so strongly support.