Pirate Party Germany Server Raid - Open Letter

In response to the raid on the German Pirate Party's servers on Friday 20th May, the following letter was delivered to the German ambassador to the UK this morning.

Excellency,

We are writing to you to express our concerns regarding the events of Friday the 20th May 2011.

As you will be well aware, German police officers seized a number of servers belonging to the Piratenpartei (The German Pirate Party), provided by AixIT in Offenbach. Some of these servers constituted the information technology and communications infrastructure of the party, a legal and officially recognised political party in Germany apparently at the behest of French investigators.

The board of the Piratenpartei has suggested that to meet the requirements of the French investigation, there was no requirement to take all of these servers off-line. Indeed according to the information it says it has been provided with, only one single public service on a virtual server of the party was affected. The scale of the actual seizure would therefore seem to have been a massive intrusion into the communications infrastructure of the sixth largest party in Germany, quite possibly an act of incredible incompetence on the part of those involved.

This of course is compounded by the fact that state elections were due to take place in Bremen just two short days after the raid, meaning that the impact of the raid could well have included serious political damage and harm to the democratic process in the Federal Republic of Germany. I understand that there are now some questions as to the legality of this action, but even if it were found to have been totally legal, it should be clear that it had the potential to undermine the Democratic process and action should be taken to prevent a repeat. This is after all an issue that could have an impact on any Party in the Federal Republic of Germany and at any level of politics.

In short, we are in full agreement with Rick Falkvinge, the former head the Swedish Pirate Party in his suggestion that "Doing this to a democratic party — Germany’s sixth largest, actually — two days before an election is nothing short of a democratic sabotage".

So may I ask what undertakings the government of the Federal Republic of Germany will take to ensure that such interference in the democratic process does not occur again? I thank you for your time, and look forward to your response.

Yours sincerely,

John Barron
Nominating officer, Pirate Party UK

For and on behalf of
Mr Loz Kaye BA (Hons) Cantab.
Leader, Pirate Party UK
and the National Executive Committee and Board of Governors of the Pirate Party UK