“A successful attorney.” Interesting recent story about the North Rhine-Westphalian Pirate Party, summarized from Spiegel-Online’s article. Two neighboring Pirate Party groups in the region were having a bitter dispute. The Gelsenkirchen group finally wrote to the state Pirate Party complaining that their foe group had neonazi propaganda materials in its possession. (The German Pirate Party voted at its last national meeting to be against right-wing stuff, despite their core interest in freedom of opinion.) The state party confronted the foe party, which “credibly” refuted the accusations. And hired a lawyer. The lawyer asked the state PP for the original correspondence, including all names. The NRW Pirates voted not to share this information. Spiegel says that, according to the German Data Protection Act (Bundesdatenschutzgesetz), the Pirates also should not have shared this information because no government offices are investigating the matter and because they don’t have permission to share it.

Klaus Hammer was the political director (Politischer Geschäftsführer) of the North Rhine-Westphalian Pirate Party. He is a 45-year-old IT worker who’s been involved with the PP for several years and has run for office. Last weekend he told the NRW state PP board of directors that despite their decision not to share the information, he had felt “pressured” by the lawyer. He then panicked, he said, and reached an agreement according to which he placed printouts of the emails in a trash bin outside his building. The next day, the printouts were gone.

Klaus Hammer has now been relieved of his political directorship.

(Eye n err FOAL g rye Cher    WRECKED s on vault.)