November 28th, 2017 IRC Meeting

Decisions/Endorsements

Dec. 7th Net Neutrality Protests

On Dec. 7th various groups including Demand Progress and Fight for the Future are organizing protests outside Verizon stores. Boston Pirates suggest we endorse and turn people out to them.

Sec. 702 Update

Congress is debating whether to renew the law that allows the FBI and other agencies to conduct warrantless searches on Americans’ communications, Title VII of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which was renewed in 2012.

At the previous meeting, we agreed to oppose the:

• FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act (S. 2012);
• awful House-led USA Liberty Act and
• inclusion of any 702 reauthorization provisions in an end-of-year omnibus spending bill.

Tonight we are reviewing whether to support the USA RIGHTS Act (H.R. 4124 / S. 1997). Warrantless.org has some info on this bill.

There's a longer explanation of the bills and what we should do at warrantless.org. Useful press coverage, a Reason summary and a useful reminder on the rhetoric from Marcy Wheeler.

Projects

Planning for 2018 Elections & Organizing

Training schedule:

• 12/9, Holyoke
• January: Boston
• February: Worcester

Once we set dates for the trainings we will put up a poll asking about our 2018 conference and whether to change it into several regional conferences.

In 2018, towns decide when their elections are held, but most are held in the first half of the year. State & county elections are in November. What offices are up in 2018 is listed here. We have been asked to hold a town election training in Milford this year.

Nomination papers for federal/state/county elections are available in mid-February. State/county candidates have until the end of May to gather all of their signatures, while federal candidates have until the end of July. The number of signatures needed vary from 150 for State Rep. to 2000 for US House of Representatives.

The electronic election for our officers went well in 2017, and we should consider doing it again. Such a change would allow us to decentralize our yearly conference and hold multiple regional conferences in different parts of the state. We could schedule monthly conferences starting in March or April. We could limit them to about 4-5 hours long, with the first half being training and the second half being discussion. If we want to go this route, we should ask our members soon and see who wants to organize their regional conference.

Digital Right of Repair

Details. Making calls to volunteers and members.

Statements In Process

• MA Bill H.3641: An Act relative to electronic tolling - Approved our opposition to it. Past position is to remove the tolls on the Pike since it has long been paid for.
• US S.1241 - Combating Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing, and Counterfeiting Act of 2017 - Approved our opposition to S.1241. Need statement (Joe)

Other To Dos

FOSS Tutorials

Worcester farm group is interested in having some FOSS tutorials. Perhaps:

• how to do basic labels in GIMP,
• work through a few sample spreadsheets related to seed cost and
• similarly applicable real-world situations, depending on the needs of the group

Basically how to do graph design & product management with open source tools. Malt will put together a one paragraph description of what we need and we can mail it out to ask pirates to help.

Tech/Outreach

• Review regular IRC meeting day. Poll sent to email list - Sent (jokeefe)
• email Loomio invite to supporters (jokeefe)
• set up torrents for PirateCon videos (creynolds)
• post remaining audio for PirateCon talks (srevilak)
• finish setup of myBB (jokeefe)
• install mattermost as slack alternative (jokeefe)

Mayfirst is looking at setting up a Discourse instance we could use.

Upcoming Events

• 11/29, 6-9pm, Somerville Cryptoparty, The Sprouts, 339R Summer Street, Somerville
• 12/3, 7-8pm, Monthly Video Magazine Meeting
• 12/10, 7-8pm, Monthly Video Magazine Meeting
• 12/17, Chelsea Manning's Birthday
• 12/17, 7-8pm, Monthly Video Magazine Meeting
• 12/26, 7-8pm?, Recording Monthly Video Magazine
• 12/27, 6-9pm, Somerville Cryptoparty, The Sprouts, 339R Summer Street, Somerville
• 1/3, 6-9pm, Cryptoparty at the Community WorcNight, Worcshop, 243 Stafford St, Worcester, MA 01603. registration

See: 2017 calendar

Participants

Observers

• igel