PPI Minutes 2023-05-24

Agenda PPI BOARD MEETING

--- 24.5.2023 05:00 UTC/07:00 CEST ---

Jitsi Room: https://jitsi.pirati.cz/PPI-Board

Backup Big Blue Button Room: https://bbb.piratensommer.de/b/gre-cnw-a9v

Audio recording: PiratesOnAir Streaming

https://owncloud.ag-technik.de/s/Fam34TPe9jaDJET

1 - ATTENDEES

1.1 - Members of the PPI board

participating: Julian, Mike, Florie, Bailey, Keith, Gregory, Alexander

excused:

unexcused:

Quorum:

1.2 - Others

Alternate Board Members:

participating: Mia, Bastian, Carlos (arrived late)

excused:

unexcused:

Guests: Cedric, PiratesOnAir

participating:

2 - PROCEEDINGS

RoP: https://wiki.pp-international.net/wiki/index.php?title=PPI_Board/Rules_of_Procedure

Meeting opened at 05:03 UTC by Florie

Meeting chaired by Florie

Secretary for this meeting is Everyone

Quorum established with 8 out of 9 board members present (incl. 2 alternates).

Streaming started: started https://piratesonair.net/live-stream/

Recording started: 05:00 UTC

Postal votes: none

Notes on meeting process: none

3 - APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES

Motion
Do we approve the minutes?
* Minutes of the last meeting: https://wiki.pp-international.net/wiki/index.php?title=PPI_Minutes_2023-04-23
Yes : Keith, Florie, Mike, Gregory, Alexander
No :
Abstain : Bailey
Result: minutes approved

4 - REPORTS

4.1 - Short reports of the board members 1)

Board

• Florie Marie: I went to the PPCZ GA in Liberec and also to the first PPEU board meeting. I've been invited to the next PPDE GA. I discuss with Sven Clément about the subject from the last board meeting about the box address of PPI. He says that it will be easy to have a mailbox in Luxembourg. It will not cost anything.

• Gregory Engels: Nothing significant to report
• Bailey Lamon: Hey everybody, sorry for being absent lately, I spent about a month traveling around Europe and visiting with people afk, including attending the conference in Strasbourg which was awesome! I’m back home now and ready to start dealing with treasurer responsibilities, finally. I went to PostFinance when I was in Geneva to see about getting a new PIN for my bank account login, as I don’t have one, but they told me I had to deal with that over the phone. I still have to give them a call, which I’ll do Thursday (I’ve basically been working and hibernating since I got back). I’d also like to start dealing with things like membership fee invoices, fundraising, budgeting, etc and I know lots of folks are interested in working on those things as well, so let’s have at ‘er! Thanks for bearing with me. <3
• Michal Gill: PPCZ GA in Liberec with a couple of great international panels included. Thanks to Florie for participating in one of them representing France and PPI. We also had the Polish, new Slovaks, Slovenians, Germans, Luxembourgish, Swedish... Even Bailey for a bit. It was an interesting event for sure. FYI: My department within PPCZ started planning a similar thing, a conference for the intl. Pirates. Planned date: Prague on November 11-12 2023. The goal is to discuss the CEEP and the inner workings of our parties.
• Keith Goldstein: I had numerous meetings about the IGF, which I will discuss later as part of our UN activities. I edited and posted a UNOG blog, and I made a few other posts on our website, social media, and elsewhere. I updated the Wiki and made announcements as usual. I will be at UNHQ in NY in about a month. I will be on a mission to lay the groundwork for a PPI UN side event. I missed Pirate beer, but I heard that it went off well. Please accept my apologies for the unexpected absence. We need to schedule another Pirate Beer, and the upcoming GA could be a good opportunity.

• Alexander Isavnin: Preparing sessions for IGF, talking to journalists about information freedoms, participated in Pirate Beer.
• Julian Häffner: Nothing to report
• Mauricio Vargas: not present
• Maycow Toledo: not present

Alternates:

• Adam Wolf: ???
• Sebastian Krone:

I have been monitoring the PPI technique as I do every day.

All patches are up to date. All systems are running smoothly.

All requests for forwarding emails, etc. have been processed (not sure if I've received them all, though, as there are some peer-to-peer conversations).

I had asked to see the contract for data processing by a processor (Art. 28.3 GDPR) regarding our Stefan Thöni hosted discourse that we use. When will this happen?

Remark:

We have the P.O. Box in Geneva because we need an address in Switzerland since PPI is based in Switzerland. It was a lot of work to solve the problem.

20 francs are peanuts.

My mail to Luxembourg remained unanswered.

We would need a GA decision to move the seat from Switzerland to Luxembourg.

• Mia Utz: Nothing important to report
• Raman Ojha: not present
• Carlos Polo: not present

5.1 - Proposals

• Discourse/BBB Room Administrators.

Unanimous decision was requested to return admin control to the board.

Issue of admin removal

Florie: We were all ejected. Initially by Cedric, and later by Stefan Thoni.

We asked Cedric to come for an explanation to know why we were ejected from the discourse.

Cedric: A few weeks ago I unilaterally pinned a post on a discourse and removed administrative rights from most of the administrators - no, not all, the President, the Treasurer and the host machine's sysadmin kept their access - and this action makes me in the eyes of some incompatible with my position in the court of arbitration. And in a way I agree with those who might think that.

A question remains: why such a move?

Simply a succession of facts and events that made this choice, in my eyes, the only one possible.

It will be difficult for everyone to follow the facts given their multiplicity but let's go anyway.

The Discourse

The Discourse has been around since 2018 to try to get Pirates to discuss motions for general assemblies. This Discourse I have administered since its inception, and the person in charge of the information system, Bastian, refused to install it on said PPI information system, so Stephan generously provided a machine to do so. Since that time, the Discourse has never been and still is not a PPI tool in the sense of sovereignty. Indeed, my action ultimately demonstrated that the administrator of this machine, Stephan, had all the power by unilaterally removing the last administrative rights from the PPI President and Treasurer in particular. A legitimate person who manages the rights would have known who should have had the administration rights ... or not.

Indeed, this instance of Discourse is left to the wayside and administration rights were granted on an ad hoc basis to go "faster" without structuring the access management more than that, but above all administration rights were never withdrawn. But who was I when I made this unilateral decision to prune access rights? Vice-secretary in charge of IT. So I had the means...

The Court of Arbitration

Since our election to the Court of Arbitration, some of us have asked what tools were available to us to contact each other, to meet, to manage our cases. To this we were told that we had to manage ourselves. Yes, let's manage. There is a mailing list for the arbitration court... I have never been the only one to be able to read the messages sent to it, another member of the CoA noting that, although he had alerted the people in charge of the mailing list, he was not receiving anything. An appeal was launched on the Discourse, without any response. It would have been easier if there had been a real register of people in post with a directory, but that too does not exist.

All this prohibits the CoA from meeting, but that's okay, it's up to them to figure it out. Duly noted.

So some of the members of the CoA know that there are files to be investigated. Cases that have caused ordinary members of the PPI, the Pirate Parties, to decide to renounce their status, to stop sitting. Cases that have arisen because decisions made by the board seem questionable and require a thorough investigation of PPI's decisions, statutes, bank accounts and contracts. This is not a revelation to the board, they know what they have done. Because it elected an alternate, Bastian, as treasurer even though the statutes forbid it. Bastian was able to pay invoices for IT services that were offered when I was in the office. IT services that do not cover the proper functioning of the mailings, nor the follow-up of the members, nor the installation of a Discourse.

But all this is impossible to handle, because the CoA cannot meet, not being able to reach all its members, members who do not answer a call on a platform where they do not necessarily go.

Nevertheless, some CoA members attend the board meetings, because it is under surveillance. This is not a revelation, it knows.

The 23rd of April 2023

I thought this day would be a quiet day and for personal reasons, those who know, I didn't necessarily aspire to anything else. A PPI board meeting is not necessarily there to tarnish this day... normally.

It all started at the beginning ... yes literally ... of this meeting when the president, Florie, started to chair the meeting, totally in her role according to the statutes, when at this moment some voices were raised, notably Bastian, to say that it is not automatic, that we have to decide. Reframing. But there is a lot of commotion. The president, noticing that a notorious stalker of the PPFR, Numero6, is still present live on the meeting, asks him to leave. She was told that the meeting was public and open to all - but it is broadcast live on the Internet and there is no need to be connected to the discussion tool if he has no desire to participate. In the past, the board had ruled that this person's behavior was inappropriate, to say the least. Note that with similar rules, the Young Pirates have managed to ban him from their meetings. But some people on this board have come to his defense, notably Mia, under the pretext of "he's my friend". Their words, not mine. But this is not surprising when people who have already insulted in the recent past the chair of the PPI, then vice-president of the EPPU - Bastian, or have pushed members to no longer sit in the PPI - Alexander, Thomas - are present. What was a little more unexpected was the further escalation. Indeed, Alexander came to compare the chair of the PPI to Putin and the rest started to say that anyway we could do without Florie for the future. I informed several times that I was a member of the CoA and that what was going on there was not normal, when I did not scream to cover up unfounded justifications for the freedom to insult the PPI president in front of witnesses. After all, they already considered themselves free to let stalkers into PPI meetings. And all this is not in the minutes of the meeting. So I had motive and opportunity.

And the law?

Several facts and events have converged towards this focal point where a number of people have seen themselves deprived of their right of administration on an external platform of the international pirate party, even though they have the use of it. Some because they were no longer in the instances, notably Etienne, others precisely because they proposed to make a coup within the board. Did I have the right? It seems to me that yes. For the first by my role of vice-secretary to the IT for the second by the powers of the CoA of :

In particular, the Court of Arbitration has the exclusive power to

a) issue a preliminary ruling in an urgent matter of its competence,

b) declare matters of fact when necessary for the functioning of the PPI,

c) decide the disputes between the officers and the organs of the PPI,

d) decide on the restrictions on persons who breach the Statutes and the internal regulations and in these cases degrade an official or declare his further incapability to be elected

The point a/ being here the loss of the rights of administration, the b/ being the message posted publicly and whose identity of the author of said message was never a secret, the c/ having been denied during the meeting, the d/ having led to the a/ between the insults and the proposals of a coup.

And as the board itself said, we're on our own.

Was it necessary to do so?

The Pirate Parties usually recognize whistleblower status, and given the lack of minutes of the facts reported here and the possibility of loss of control of an external tool that might prevent further exchanges, I sincerely believe that this was the right thing to do. Threats that rely solely on numerical superiority in defiance of the rules should not be allowed in the Pirate Parties. However, the recognition of this threat and its consequences must be swift, effective and relentless. The PPI is in a state of dysfunction to a degree that ordinary members do not know.

Take this act as an electroshock.

Accept that the person in charge of the information system, Bastian, was still publicly admitting during the March 5, 2023 meeting that he had no control over the Discourse and thus admits that the PPI has no means of recognizing the act I committed as an abuse of power.

Also accept that the members of the Board and its extension present that day, including Alexander, Bastian, and Mia, did not care at all about the PPI statutes, as poorly thought out as one might recognize them today, while they hide behind them most of the time.

Also accept the fact that today, faced with the last charter voted in the office, a good part of the latter should resign on the evening of May 16th if they had to apply it, some, notably Alexander, using psychological pressure to make Florie resign by making an unjustified amalgam between what I did and her position as the only way out of this situation. Remember that this is already what they wanted and that is what led to my action.

The PPI Board and statutes are dysfunctional. It's sad, but it's unfortunately the naked truth.

Gregory: I would like to object to what Cedric said. This is not a true statement. I was not there in the meeting that he is referring to on the 23rd of April. I was removed from the Discourse where I have done a lot of admin work since the beginning. I was not informed, and I discovered it by accident. I don't believe there has been any decision by any body, either the board or CoA. I believe Cedric was acting on his own. His comment that the board is under observation, I am wondering where he thinks he has the authority to eject administrators from the PPI system. If you think it was an abuse of admin powers that he was given at one point. Why is this appropriate? To counter that this is hosted by Stefan, yes, all of our systems are hosted somewhere. In this case we asked Stefan to host the Discourse about 4 years ago for the GA administration. Stefan Thoni is a very respected hoster and provider in the Pirate movement. Always someone has hosted services for PPI. In the beginnning PP Sweden. I don't see any problem with that. Stefan removed the rights, even as a defense of a hacking attack, especially since it was not communicated. I think Stefan's decision was justified. The attack that we don't have control is wrong. As soon as things got weird, this control was executed. Since Stefan asked for a unanimous decision, who should be managing access. I suggest that all PPI board members should have admin privelages, and that includes alternate board members.

Mike: I have a few questions for Cedric. The meeting that decided. I never heard of it. Who was actually there? What Gregory said, I don't understand your reasons for doing this. When you talk of a coup happening, I am not sure about this. I don't understand what made you think about this. In the example of Keith who is the general secretary, what is the point? I feel that you need to be removed from the CoA, because you violated my trust.

Cedric: Thank you Michal for your question. As Gregory said, you were not there, at the moment of the coup proposal. At this meeting, the first thing, Florie is your chair. She has the right to chair the meeting. It started at the beginning of the meeting, you don't have the right. No, she is the chair. She has the right. Next Florie asked to remove someone from the meeting. Some members of the board said no, it is a public meeting. The young pirates have the same rules about how to run their meeting. They don't have the problem to remove the harraser. The young pirates managed to remove him. There is no problem to remove someone from a meeting. He is a friend of mine. No, he is an harrasser. A few years ago we made a point about harrasser. We said this guy is a problem. Yes, Florie asked for him to be removed. There was a no. Things escalated. She explained that she is the chair, and she needs to go on. Alexander explained that in the recording, you can hear... There was some yelling from many parts, even myself. There was a proposition to continue, to add, the meeting. Some people said that in fact we don't care about Florie. We can continue without her. She needs to resign. Some people asked Florie to resign because I did something. It is a mess, a dysfunctional system. To answer Michal about what are the right and so on. I am secretary of IT. I have rights to remove people and so on. Even with that, I'm prime admin of the tool from the first day, no Gregory you are not. I was with Etienne. It is in the board minutes of 2018, since 5 years. I give some admin rights from years, so there is no problem in that.

Gregory: Thank you for your statement, but it provided no information that is somehow relevant. Also, you are mistaken, the CoA can not act on its own - please look up the defition of Nullus querens, nullus iudex. And it is the first time that we hear about the claim that PPI is refusing to provide any resources to CoA - I would like to hear more about that. Also thank you Cedric for refraining to abuse your admin power for so long, since 2018 - good done!

Michal:

Cedric: Board has not the right to interpret the statutes that is only for the CoA. It is not sort of a conspiracy an with saying that, Gregory, you are insulting me. He is an harasser, we have proof. About the right: We have a lot of difficulties in the CoA, about tools and making decisions.

<The discussion was very long and some comments are missing. Please reference the recording if needed.>

Gregory: At first this clear statement, what happened here is a clear violation of the laws. Of course the core admin, Stefan, has control over the server. I asked for a contract for the GDPR, which is a different thing. Why Cedric has admin rights was not clear. There was no harrassment in this course. By the way, PPI is governed by an executive board, not the chair alone. Another thing we should question the CoA whether it was a collective action. I'm not sure they discussed this case in a meeting to act. I think it is only.. a try to accuse... a clear violation of the law.

Michal: Section 14 in our statutes, states the CoA, as a body as a whole, then the CoA would have to have some decision. Nothing states anything like this, point 12, the board is the group that manages. The function of the board is... The GA can do anything it wants. There is nothing like that about the CoA. They can point to how they are constituted... This is creating a lot of fog around the situation. You claim that others are interpretting the statutes poorly. I am not interpreting anything. I am stating the statutes. Your interpretation makes me concerned and think you should not be on the CoA. You have no right to sit on the court if you have not read the statutes.

Cedric: no, you just interpret my mind. I don't want to change. I just said as a board you have no rights about your sovereignty. Be careful when you discuss these things. The BBB is not in your IT. I don't understand how you can have admin access on a tool that is not your own. Tons of time people ask for contracts, because contracts are not a thing. Some people wanted to make a coup, and I deprived some people from their administrative right. No more, no less.

Florie: we have a decision to decide who should be the administrator of Discourse.

Gregory: I propose that all board members and alternates be made Discourse admins.

Michal: We should make sure this is updated with the current board members.

Florie: And what about Stefan Thoni.

Michal: I have no problem with having the rights. He mailed us when a problem occurred and I have no problem with him running it.

Bastian: Since Stefan is the core admin, there is no decision applicable. We should look more at the logs to see who is doing what.

Motion
Shall all board members and alternates be admins on Discourse
*The admin rights should be given to all board and alternates if they wish so. The admin rights should be revoked, if members are leaving the board. This should be a standing decision and apply to new board members when they join the PPI board.
Yes : Alexander, Gregory, Florie, Mike, Bailey, Keith,Mia, Julian
No :
Abstain :
Result: motion passed unanimously

Florie: It would be great to have the Discourse server on our own IT. I ask for the vice secretaries to investigate this, so we do not have this issue again. Stefan also made a decision, even if he is the core admin, and I think this is an issue even if you don't. I will wait until we have a decision.

Cedric: You have to make a decision, to remove me as IT secretary. There is no point in trying to take my power back. I don't know what is my position.

Michal: Based on Cedric's request, I suggest that we remove him from the IT position, and I will advance my plan to remove him from the CoA.

Cedric: Don't take a vote. I can withdraw myself. So, without a vote, staying in Discourse is possible. It is no longer my duty to be responsible for that.

Michal: Just a clarification, it was never your duty and what you did, didn't solve anything.

Florie: Cedric you withdrew from what position

Cedric: I withdrew from the IT position. If I withdraw from the CoA I don't have to announce this to the board but to the ordinary members of PPI who elected me at this position.

Mia: We have not discussed things that we should have been discussing.

Gregory: If we cannot continue with all of the tasks, then we would have to have another meeting.

• GA Date Announcement

Florie: the next GA should be on July 1st - Are you all agree?

Keith: that would not give our members enough time to prepare

Florie: Shall we have it the last week of July, 29th of July.

Gregory: I have a conflict on the 29th of July. I could not be there, but it is not just dependent on me. I could not be there.

Florie: it is decided then, since I hear no other objections.

5.2 - Working Groups Update

• SCUBA/Pirate Beer

I propose to have the next Pirate beer on the 24th of June. It would be great to have a meeting before. The next meeting would be at 21:00 UTC. We could have the Pirate beer before. If no one wants to speak...

Gregory: the 24th, this is a date of the PPDE GA, so it is not a great date.

Gregory: Can we see the results of the Doodle. Saturday is the least preferable date for board members. I worry that the attendance would be low and ask to refrain from having regular meetings on Saturdays.

Carlos: I second Gregory's motion.

Florie: I proposed to have a meeting on the same date of the month - i.e. every month on the 24th. It is easier to remember, if it is done like this.

The choices were on Monday. I proposed to have it on this weekend date, and I proposed that we just decide because it is annoying to decide everytime. I think at the moment we have to be ok about a date.

Gregory: I had not witnessed a conversation. I don't think a specific numeric date is better. Having every third Wed. or something would work.

Florie: (showed the results). If you agree we can choose the Wed. option, and we can choose the third Wed. at 05:00 UTC.

Gregory: That would work for me.

Florie: I proposed the 24th on the Wire discussion, as based on the numeric date.

The result of the doodle is that most votes have been for Monday and Wednesday 5 and 6 UTC - I propose now to have a meeting on every third Wednesday on 5 UTC.

Alexander: I support Gregory and I also think we need to rotate hours, so that they are the way that we had them in the past. We used to have Tuesday or it could be Wed., but with rotating time.

Florie: I agree that we need to choose. It is a problem now. It would be great if someone else could propose, because no one accepts my proposal. I think it is enough to have one meeting by month. It would be great to have a fixed date, the third Wed. or whenever, a fixed date. It would be great. Having a Doodle each time is not possible. We should make a decision. I propose 05:00 UTC and 21:00 UTC.

Bailey: this time is not ideal for them in their time zone. 21:00 should be better, but this is the thing about rotating time zones.

Motion
Future meetings on every third Wednesday, starting at 21:00 UTC, and we will rotate between 05:00 UTC and 21:00 UTC.
Do we approve this change?
Yes : Florie, Bailey, Mia, Keith, Mike, Gregory
No :
Abstain :
Result: approved

The next Meeting will be on June 21st, the third Wednesday in June. other points on the Agenda are postponeds

• PPI Communications Group

Maycow recommended that we set up a working group that could ensure we post content routinely.

5.4 ECOSOC/UN

• IGF

Alexander submitted session on "Digital transformation and sovereignty towards autarchy", going to submit "Implementation of censorship by digital means update" today.

Support submission of networking session, still suggest an idea to have a booth as a harbour.

6 AOB - Any other business

• Aaron Swarz Day

Maycow: We should add it to our calendar and support events.

Keith: Added it to the calendar. No vote is necessary.

• David Miranda Announcement

Maycow: He was Brazilian and was persecuted by the NSA and Scotland Yard during the Snowden case reporting. David was a supporter of the Pirate Party and actively participated in our groups and activities. I would like to propose a condolence note to be published by the PPI.

Keith: We posted the announcement on our website. No vote is necessary.

• A DAO for the PPI board

• CoA member revocation

Mike: I would like to announce that since Cedric provided absolutely no valid explanation as to his Discourse rights actions, I'll be pursuing his revocation from the CoA according to the Statutes, section XIa (https://wiki.pp-international.net/wiki/index.php?title=Statutes#XIa._Revocation). If anything, this meeting gave me more reasons to call for the removal of Cedric from our judicial body based on his outrageous interpretation of the Statutes during this meeting.

Alexander: should we make this proposal in the name of the board?

Mike: If you want to. I honestly don't care either way. I'll pursue it no matter what.

===================================================

• Next Meeting: Wed. June 21st at 21:00 UTC.

• Meeting Closed: 6:40 UTC