Category Archives: Pirate Party

Fun, Games, Photography, Pirate Party, When Imagination Fails

What was done last year. 2023 Edition.

This year’s non-work accomplishments in statistics. FWIW:

Pirates

Organized one, two, ? surveillance camera mapping events.

Attended the Boston Anarchist Bookfair and organized the Pirate Party table. Worked the table for both days with Steve, Micky and Alex.

Organized the pirate contingent of and marched in the Trans Resistance March. Marched in the XR Boston contingent at Honk! Took too many photos/videos. Still haven’t finished editing or posting them.

28 Pirate News recordings. That count was fewer than the forty we recorded in 2022. Ran 24 meetings and four quarterly conferences. Didn’t send enough email updates. Probably sent too many social media posts.

Photography

Created 4016+ photos. Shared 106 on my two Flickr accounts and more in text messages to family and friends. Particularly happy with this one:

Northern Mockingbird

Took my son’s high school yearbook photograph. He was pleased. Photographed 20+ co-workers for id photos. Learned a bit about NX Tether.

Attended Victoria Sambunaris‘ talk at the Photographic Resource Center‘s Speaker Series. Attended PHSNE‘s Photographica for the second year.

Attended at least two school drama performances. Photographed one of them. Haven’t posted the photographs. Really should.

Attended two art exhibits (Hokusai and Sargent). Wanted to attend two more, but didn’t. Took too many photographs. Haven’t posted a single one. 🙁

I reviewed the Ulanzi foldable half cage.

Reading

Bought or received twenty nine “books”. Read six “books” fully, but didn’t keep to my 1/month. I use books in quotations since I am padding my numbers by including two Framelines Magazines, which I did read cover to cover, but that isn’t a big accomplishment.

Games

Played in one miniature game (at Havoc), which is the same number I played in 2022.

Finished painting 64 1/285th scale microarmor miniatures. They have been in a state of not yet done for years. Still need to Dullcoat them. Haven’t taken photos of them and posted them. Got part way through another 56. May finish those this month. They are wheeled vehicles, so may is the operative word.

Must have cleaned, glued and primed 500+ microarmor/nauts. Also, cleaned, based and primed 54 modern soviet airborne infantry stands. The basing was frustrating, but yielded the most satisfaction. Maybe I will write up my process.

The degree I increased my “pile of potential” when I should be finishing figures is depressing, so I will ignore it.

Office

Most of my office was done last year (?), but one wall remained that needed patching and painting as I have previous mounted electronics to it. I patched and primed it.

Realizing I was in over my head (decade old color matching, paint that finally dried in the cans, ugh), hired someone to paint it (and another room I patched and primed). They did a great job and dealt with my primer color misadventure. During the break, my friend David and I put up the wall shelves I have sat on for … 6 months?

Considering that the walls are not at aligned to gravity, I am pleased how it came out.

Now I just need to move books on to the shelves.

I’ll leave it at that and post about 2024 goals hopefully in January.

Privacy & Surveillance

Saturday: Fight back against government surveillance!

Reprinted from the Massachusetts Pirate Party.

This year is the 22nd anniversary of the signing of the PATRIOT Act made possible by the 9/11 attacks. Since then, government and corporate surveillance continues to expand. We will join Pirates nationwide to push back on the effort to surveill our public spaces by mapping the surveillance cameras in East Boston. Join us!

At noon on September 16th, we will meet at the East Boston Public Library at 365 Bremen Street, East Boston. It is an eight minute walk from the Airport MBTA Blue Line stop. The library has a link you can use to get directions there.

We will then divide up into teams and fan out to map cameras. We encourage everyone to wear a mask and social distance.

Register now so we know you are coming!

On Sunday, we hope you will join us in Acton for a relaxing afternoon talking, eating and, weather permitting, swimming in a pool. Register separately. Attendance at the East Boston outing is not required. It is potluck, so if you want to bring something, add to our etherpad.

We posted instructions for how to use several camera mapping apps on your phone so you can get ready. Check out what we have mapped so far at cctv.masspirates.org!

Current Affairs, Photography, Pirate Party, Social Justice

2022 Trans Resistance March

Attended this year’s Trans Resistance March in Roxbury with the Mass. Pirates contingent. Included are photos I took of or after it.

Black Trans Lives Matter Puerto Rico Pride Bans Off Our Bodies Eyes Love + Vote My Trans Sister Is Beautiful Disobedience Is Self Defense Reflecting On A March Stonewall Was A Riot! Govt. Laws Off Our Bodies Fuck Nazis Protect Trans Healthcare

Some crowd shots:

Our waving Trans/Jolly Roger flags were popular:

I was joined by Purple Bandana:

Trans Resistance March

He got one of me with the Trans/Jolly Roger flags:

https://twitter.com/Purple_Bandanna/status/1540792767525244928?s=20&t=S4mLPaYeBYvsWKJIAVweCQ

Eventually, we arrived at Franklin Park:

Afterward, I got a few local pictures including of street art:

Maze Graffiti Weld Ave. Mural Jackson - Weld Ave. Mural

The man in this mural introduced himself to me.

This park was locked preventing kids from playing in it:

Not Free To Play

The whole photo album:

Trans Resistance March 2022
Pirate Party, Speech

Attacks on Section 230

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Steve and I talked about the CDA Section 230 gutting SAFE TECH Act on the latest Pirate News livestream. You can read a redline version.

Some of the articles we reference:

We live stream Sundays at 7:30pm Eastern. You can find past recordings at MassPirates.org.

Pirate Party, Privacy & Surveillance

Boston Facial Recognition Ban Hearing Today

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Reposting this from the Massachusetts Pirate Party. If you live in Boston, do contact your city councilor and tell them to support this ordinance. Details below.

Today at 3pm, Boston City Council’s Committee on Government Operations will discuss a proposed ordinance to ban face surveillance in Boston. The hearing will be by Zoom meeting and the public may watch this meeting via live stream at boston.gov/city-council-tv.

It is too late to address the committee, but you can still provide written testimony. Details below. The ACLU put together a toolkit for activists that includes model testimony. There are also public education resources available at https://aclum.org/presspause.

Please attend the hearing and help out in the following ways:

  1. Sign and share the ACLU’s petition in support of the campaign: https://action.aclu.org/petition/ban-face-surveillance-boston;
  2. Encouraging your friends and family in Boston to provide testimony in support of this ordinance;
  3. If you live in Boston, contact your city councilor and tell them to support this ordinance. You can find a list and email them at https://www.boston.gov/departments/city-council. The ACLU has a toolkit for activists that includes contact information for the city councilors.

Written comments may be sent to the Committee or staff email (below) and will be made a part of the record and available to all Councilors.

Email:  ccc.go@boston.gov/christine.odonnell@boston.gov Attn:  Christine O’Donnell, Docket #0683 

Fax Number:  617-635-4203 Attn:  Christine O’Donnell, Docket #0683 

Mail Address:  Docket #0683, City Council, City Hall, 5th Floor, Boston MA  02201

Privacy & Surveillance, Web/Tech

Protecting Your Digital Identity Workshop

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Recently I gave a workshop on protecting your digital identity for the 2019 Digital Literacy Fall & Winter Workshop series run by the Somerville Media Center and the Somerville Public Library.

You can download a slightly updated version of my slide deck.

If you would be interested in such a workshop for your community, non-profit group or company, please feel free to contact me at jokeefe at jamesokeefe dot org and I would be happy to setup a time or help find other members of the Somerville Cryptoparty group to teach.

Computer Security, Pirate Party, Web/Tech

App Privacy Workshop (Updated)

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I gave an application privacy workshop at Code for Boston on Tuesday. They recorded my talk on Facebook:

and on YouTube:

I posted the slide deck as a PDF. Feel free to offer suggestions in the comments.

Some of the topics I need to add to the presentation:

  • highlight privacy and security testing;
  • having development/test servers and how to sanitize the data in the development/test database;
  • more about SQL/XSS Injection attacks;
  • review the video for other topics to add.
Art, Censorship, Web/Tech

Patreon made it easier to troll its users

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Scott Helme is a Information Security Consultant. He has a Patreon account on which he posts about computer security issues and which he uses to take in donations for each blog post.  Recently he found out that Patreon suspended his account:

He could still post and people could still signup to support him, but, taking a page from Paypal, Patreon prevented him from withdrawing any of the money people donated.  Eventually, Patreon completed their investigation and emailed him that he was good to go.  He eventually discovered that:

He estimates that account withdrawals were suspended for between 18 and 47 days.

Account takeovers are a real problem. Had his account been taken over, it would be good if someone couldn’t take his money out and notifying the account that they think it might be hacked could tip the hacker.  In that light, it could make sense to act as they did.

Having multiple other methods of contacting the user would have helped in this case…. well unless email, phone number and Signal were compromised. Patreon would need to prove they are who they say they are, of course. Phishing is a problem as well.

That all said, going from one fraudulent pledge to account takeover seems a stretch.

But this incident reminded me of Violet Blue‘s reporting in Engadget about a troll campaign against women AMSR video creators:

Capitalizing on entrenched and easily exploitable anti-sex policies by internet giant payment processors and a new internet sex panic ushered in by FOSTA, 8chan trolls have started a campaign to mass-report attractive women who make ASMR videos. Listing names of women making these sound-effect videos in a forum thread called “PayPal lowering the hammer on ASMRtits” they’ve declared war by posting links to report pages for PayPal, and called upon fellow haters to get the women kicked off YouTube and Patreon as well.

… and that Patreon just added another method for trolls to harass Patreon’s users.  If all it takes is for one fraudulent looking donation to pass into someone’s account to flip the Account Hacked bit, trolls will use Patreon’s process to suspend a user’s ability to withdraw their money for two to six weeks. That would screw up the life of anyone who makes a living via Patreon.

Patreon has more than a customer service problem.