Minnesota Pirate Party – A Geek With Guns

Minnesota Pirate Party CryptoParty

On Tuesday, June 25^th the Minnesota Pirate Party will be hosting its second CryptoParty. For those of you who aren’t signed up with Facebook, the event will be held at the Churchill Apartments located at 111 Marquette Ave. South in Minneapolis, Minnesota. To gain entry ring apartment #483.

At this event we will go over public-key cryptography, how to setup OpenPGP to encrypt e-mail, and how to use Off-the-Record Messaging to encrypt instant messages. Everybody is welcome even if you work for a three letter government agency that has been caught spying on American citizens (in fact agents of that agency are encouraged to attend so we can emasculate you by demonstrating how futile your spying efforts are).

Monday Metal: Death Throes of the Terrorsquid by Alestorm

Since the Pirate Party of Minnesota is throwing a CryptoParty tonight (you should come) I thought it would be appropriate to start this week with some pirate metal:

The Minnesota Pirate Party

I’ve made my views on intellectual property well known at this point. Due to these views I was contacted by a friend who asked me if I wanted to participate in starting a Minnesota chapter of the Pirate Party. For those of you who aren’t aware the Pirate Party isn’t a unified organization but a loose knit affiliation of mostly political parties that focus on civil liberties, direct democracy, and reforming intellectual property laws. Being an anarchist of the individualist persuasion I don’t give a shit about direct democracy (or any kind of democracy for that matter) but I am a big fan of civil liberties and an even bigger fan of abolishing intellectual property laws. In addition to my desire to abolish intellectual property laws I’m also a fan of beer, which I was promised will play a major part in the Minnesota Pirate Party.

Obviously I’m not going to involve myself in the political side of things but I like the people starting this group and the offer sounds like a lot of fun. I’ll post more as we get the groundwork laid out but I thought I would let you all know that the Pirate Party is coming to Minnesota and, if I have any say in the matter, will be bringing the message of abolishing intellectual property with it.