Hello All,
In a previous email to the BB I posted the link to the letter we all received as members.
https://www.amsat.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/20200710_AMSAT_Le...
I was re-reading it and something caught my eye that I had missed before.
"AMSAT did not provide a copy of its membership mailing addresses to Open Research Institute."
Just how was our mailing list compromised? This seems like a serious breech of security, was this a hack? was any other information lost? was it ever found out how it happened? is our mailing list as they say "out in the wind"?
Michelle could you possibly check from the ORI side and backtrack how ORI came into possession of the AMSAT mailing list, was it something that was procured online?
AMSAT needs to follow up on this privacy issue and report back what it found and any steps that were taken to prevent this from happening in the future.
I look forward to an answer
73 Kevin WA7FWF #19623
Yes, I can.
That part of Clayton's letter is wrong and has been repeatedly clarified before. Including at the 2019 annual board meeting, where Tom Clark asked me about it, as part of the record.
Clayton Coleman was secretary in 2019.
He ran the election.
He decided that candidate statements were limited in length to 350 words, would be subject to editorial control by AMSAT, and could not include links. These new rules were given to us right before the 4th of July holiday with a deadline of the 7th.
This is different than any election before, where statements went directly to the printer from the candidate, were not limited in length, and no one from AMSAT leadership (who might be running for reelection themselves) had any control over the content of their challengers' statements.
We got these rules right before ballots went out. We (four challengers) already had normal-sized statements on the web and they had been up six weeks at that point. Those were the ones we wanted to use, and link to.
We knew that as candidates, we had the right to request the mailing list, and send our own statements, independent of the ballot.
I requested the address list and got the DBASE4 export.
Bruce Perens had already written a letter of support and distributed it widely on the web. It introduced us and included our four full bios and statements.
I asked Bruce if we could use his letter in the mailing. He said yes. Since he was President of Open Research Institute at the time, he wanted the return address to not be his private home address, but a business address. That was ORI's address. He was the author of the endorsement, so I used his preferred return address.
I converted the DBASE4 to a more useful format, fixed the 50 or so undeliverable addresses, and found an inexpensive printer. Then I sent the letter from Bruce to the printer, with the bios and statements.
That turned out to be a good thing. Bios and statements were not included with the ballots mailed out, at all.
If we had not sent the letter, then name recognition would be the primary factor. We were running against well-known people.
We complained about this. It was unusual departure from the past and seemed set up to let leadership benefit from being incumbents.
The original proposal from Clayton was for an electronic only ballot. Patrick said that the bylaws were a bit clunky here and it did need to be mailed out on paper. Paper was required.
This is a big reason why I made a motion at our one board meeting, in March, for a bylaws committee.
This bylaw isn't hard to fix. There's lots of examples out there of organizations doing electronic voting with working published bylaws.
Bruce made it very clear, when the incumbents stirred up the pot about the return address, that it was an endorsement from him, this was commonly done in political campaigns, and it would be grossly improper for me to use AMSATs return address because that would make it look like Bruce was speaking for or was from AMSAT. That was not going to happen. *That* would be improper.
No one candidate wanted their personal address used as a return address. We were mailing this as a slate and splitting the cost. We didn't have time or funds to make an organization or rent a box for one letter on short notice. The printer required a real return address.
No one had the address list except the candidates. Namely me because I contracted the printer and handled the DBASE4 address conversion. That is a neat story in and of itself,, for another time.
Bruce only sent the text to me and chipped in some money for postage.
The printing was automated in Van Nuys, CA.
All of this is known to Clayton Coleman and his friends on the board that signed the statement from this week. It has been explained by Bruce publicly, and by me several times on social media. Tom Clark brought it up at the 2019 annual board meeting because of the return address pot-stirring. I explained it there too. Like I said, it's on the record.
I think insinuating the addresses were mishandled is a deliberate twisting of honest efforts to scramble to get uncensored candidate statements out to voters on short notice. We just didn't have a lot of time, and Bruce was very generous in writing a cover letter.
Again, candidates are allowed the use of the mailing lists for election purposes.
So, no, there was no breach. Clayton knows all this.
Saying it the way he did is a cheap shot at me, Patrick, Bruce Perens, and ORI.
-Michelle W5NYV
On Sun, Jul 12, 2020, 19:11 Kevin via AMSAT-BB [email protected] wrote:
Hello All,
In a previous email to the BB I posted the link to the letter we all received as members.
https://www.amsat.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/20200710_AMSAT_Le...
I was re-reading it and something caught my eye that I had missed before.
"AMSAT did not provide a copy of its membership mailing addresses to Open Research Institute."
Just how was our mailing list compromised? This seems like a seriousbreech of security, was this a hack? was any other information lost? was it ever found out how it happened? is our mailing list as they say "out in the wind"?
Michelle could you possibly check from the ORI side and backtrack how ORI came into possession of the AMSAT mailing list, was it something that was procured online?
AMSAT needs to follow up on this privacy issue and report back what it found and any steps that were taken to prevent this from happening in the future.
I look forward to an answer
73 Kevin WA7FWF #19623
Sent via [email protected]. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views of AMSAT-NA. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: https://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
Spin Spin Spin. The simple truth here is Director Thompson took the AMSAT member database, and handed it over to a 3rd party competing entity for the purpose of solicitation. I know I did not give ORI my home address, yet ORI sent me a letter. This was a violation of my privacy, and for AMSAT members living in the EU, this was a violation of the law. Any attempt to explain this away is just more lies and deceit from Director Thompson about the shady practices they have engaged in over the past few years. As I keep saying, this isn't a one time thing, this is a pattern of reprehensible behavior that is unbecoming of an elected position and this community. Director Thompson and Director Stoddard should resign.
-Dave, KG5CCI
On Mon, Jul 13, 2020 at 5:33 AM Michelle Thompson via AMSAT-BB < [email protected]> wrote:
Yes, I can.
That part of Clayton's letter is wrong and has been repeatedly clarified before. Including at the 2019 annual board meeting, where Tom Clark asked me about it, as part of the record.
Clayton Coleman was secretary in 2019.
He ran the election.
He decided that candidate statements were limited in length to 350 words, would be subject to editorial control by AMSAT, and could not include links. These new rules were given to us right before the 4th of July holiday with a deadline of the 7th.
This is different than any election before, where statements went directly to the printer from the candidate, were not limited in length, and no one from AMSAT leadership (who might be running for reelection themselves) had any control over the content of their challengers' statements.
We got these rules right before ballots went out. We (four challengers) already had normal-sized statements on the web and they had been up six weeks at that point. Those were the ones we wanted to use, and link to.
We knew that as candidates, we had the right to request the mailing list, and send our own statements, independent of the ballot.
I requested the address list and got the DBASE4 export.
Bruce Perens had already written a letter of support and distributed it widely on the web. It introduced us and included our four full bios and statements.
I asked Bruce if we could use his letter in the mailing. He said yes. Since he was President of Open Research Institute at the time, he wanted the return address to not be his private home address, but a business address. That was ORI's address. He was the author of the endorsement, so I used his preferred return address.
I converted the DBASE4 to a more useful format, fixed the 50 or so undeliverable addresses, and found an inexpensive printer. Then I sent the letter from Bruce to the printer, with the bios and statements.
That turned out to be a good thing. Bios and statements were not included with the ballots mailed out, at all.
If we had not sent the letter, then name recognition would be the primary factor. We were running against well-known people.
We complained about this. It was unusual departure from the past and seemed set up to let leadership benefit from being incumbents.
The original proposal from Clayton was for an electronic only ballot. Patrick said that the bylaws were a bit clunky here and it did need to be mailed out on paper. Paper was required.
This is a big reason why I made a motion at our one board meeting, in March, for a bylaws committee.
This bylaw isn't hard to fix. There's lots of examples out there of organizations doing electronic voting with working published bylaws.
Bruce made it very clear, when the incumbents stirred up the pot about the return address, that it was an endorsement from him, this was commonly done in political campaigns, and it would be grossly improper for me to use AMSATs return address because that would make it look like Bruce was speaking for or was from AMSAT. That was not going to happen. *That* would be improper.
No one candidate wanted their personal address used as a return address. We were mailing this as a slate and splitting the cost. We didn't have time or funds to make an organization or rent a box for one letter on short notice. The printer required a real return address.
No one had the address list except the candidates. Namely me because I contracted the printer and handled the DBASE4 address conversion. That is a neat story in and of itself,, for another time.
Bruce only sent the text to me and chipped in some money for postage.
The printing was automated in Van Nuys, CA.
All of this is known to Clayton Coleman and his friends on the board that signed the statement from this week. It has been explained by Bruce publicly, and by me several times on social media. Tom Clark brought it up at the 2019 annual board meeting because of the return address pot-stirring. I explained it there too. Like I said, it's on the record.
I think insinuating the addresses were mishandled is a deliberate twisting of honest efforts to scramble to get uncensored candidate statements out to voters on short notice. We just didn't have a lot of time, and Bruce was very generous in writing a cover letter.
Again, candidates are allowed the use of the mailing lists for election purposes.
So, no, there was no breach. Clayton knows all this.
Saying it the way he did is a cheap shot at me, Patrick, Bruce Perens, and ORI.
-Michelle W5NYV
On Sun, Jul 12, 2020, 19:11 Kevin via AMSAT-BB [email protected] wrote:
Hello All,
In a previous email to the BB I posted the link to the letter we all received as members.
https://www.amsat.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/20200710_AMSAT_Le...
I was re-reading it and something caught my eye that I had missed before.
"AMSAT did not provide a copy of its membership mailing addresses to Open Research Institute."
Just how was our mailing list compromised? This seems like a seriousbreech of security, was this a hack? was any other information lost? was it ever found out how it happened? is our mailing list as they say "out in the wind"?
Michelle could you possibly check from the ORI side and backtrack how ORI came into possession of the AMSAT mailing list, was it something that was procured online?
AMSAT needs to follow up on this privacy issue and report back what it found and any steps that were taken to prevent this from happening in the future.
I look forward to an answer
73 Kevin WA7FWF #19623
Sent via [email protected]. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership.
Opinions
expressed are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views of AMSAT-NA. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite
program!
Subscription settings: https://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
Sent via [email protected]. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views of AMSAT-NA. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: https://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
On 7/13/20 7:32 PM, David Swanson via AMSAT-BB wrote:
Spin Spin Spin.
I think this is the biggest problem in the world right now.
People simply don't want to believe each other any more, or even entertain the thought that the "opponent" might be (partially) right or acting in good faith. Mistakes cannot be forgiven, because they are always made with malicious intent. And one's own actions are always right, because the other party is always wrong.
The trenches are dug, the weapons are loaded: let's go to war.
In the meantime the Russians give us Sputnik RS-44 (almost MEO), the Chinese shoot cool experiments into space (albeit with the quality of most stuff made in China) and the Germans achieve the first geo-stationary amateur payload. What does AMSAT-NA achieve? The world is already shaking its head when the USA are mentioned because of how it handles COVID-19. Now the amateur radio world laughs at how AMSAT-NA is handling itself. To quote your great leader: "So sad!"
73 de Hans (BX2ABT)
P.S. not an AMSAT-NA member, just here to share and learn about satellites. Now ducking for incoming flak.
The simple truth here is Director Thompson took the AMSAT member database, and handed it over to a 3rd party competing entity for the purpose of solicitation. I know I did not give ORI my home address, yet ORI sent me a letter. This was a violation of my privacy, and for AMSAT members living in the EU, this was a violation of the law. Any attempt to explain this away is just more lies and deceit from Director Thompson about the shady practices they have engaged in over the past few years. As I keep saying, this isn't a one time thing, this is a pattern of reprehensible behavior that is unbecoming of an elected position and this community. Director Thompson and Director Stoddard should resign.
-Dave, KG5CCI
On Mon, Jul 13, 2020 at 5:33 AM Michelle Thompson via AMSAT-BB < [email protected]> wrote:
Yes, I can.
That part of Clayton's letter is wrong and has been repeatedly clarified before. Including at the 2019 annual board meeting, where Tom Clark asked me about it, as part of the record.
Clayton Coleman was secretary in 2019.
He ran the election.
He decided that candidate statements were limited in length to 350 words, would be subject to editorial control by AMSAT, and could not include links. These new rules were given to us right before the 4th of July holiday with a deadline of the 7th.
This is different than any election before, where statements went directly to the printer from the candidate, were not limited in length, and no one from AMSAT leadership (who might be running for reelection themselves) had any control over the content of their challengers' statements.
We got these rules right before ballots went out. We (four challengers) already had normal-sized statements on the web and they had been up six weeks at that point. Those were the ones we wanted to use, and link to.
We knew that as candidates, we had the right to request the mailing list, and send our own statements, independent of the ballot.
I requested the address list and got the DBASE4 export.
Bruce Perens had already written a letter of support and distributed it widely on the web. It introduced us and included our four full bios and statements.
I asked Bruce if we could use his letter in the mailing. He said yes. Since he was President of Open Research Institute at the time, he wanted the return address to not be his private home address, but a business address. That was ORI's address. He was the author of the endorsement, so I used his preferred return address.
I converted the DBASE4 to a more useful format, fixed the 50 or so undeliverable addresses, and found an inexpensive printer. Then I sent the letter from Bruce to the printer, with the bios and statements.
That turned out to be a good thing. Bios and statements were not included with the ballots mailed out, at all.
If we had not sent the letter, then name recognition would be the primary factor. We were running against well-known people.
We complained about this. It was unusual departure from the past and seemed set up to let leadership benefit from being incumbents.
The original proposal from Clayton was for an electronic only ballot. Patrick said that the bylaws were a bit clunky here and it did need to be mailed out on paper. Paper was required.
This is a big reason why I made a motion at our one board meeting, in March, for a bylaws committee.
This bylaw isn't hard to fix. There's lots of examples out there of organizations doing electronic voting with working published bylaws.
Bruce made it very clear, when the incumbents stirred up the pot about the return address, that it was an endorsement from him, this was commonly done in political campaigns, and it would be grossly improper for me to use AMSATs return address because that would make it look like Bruce was speaking for or was from AMSAT. That was not going to happen. *That* would be improper.
No one candidate wanted their personal address used as a return address. We were mailing this as a slate and splitting the cost. We didn't have time or funds to make an organization or rent a box for one letter on short notice. The printer required a real return address.
No one had the address list except the candidates. Namely me because I contracted the printer and handled the DBASE4 address conversion. That is a neat story in and of itself,, for another time.
Bruce only sent the text to me and chipped in some money for postage.
The printing was automated in Van Nuys, CA.
All of this is known to Clayton Coleman and his friends on the board that signed the statement from this week. It has been explained by Bruce publicly, and by me several times on social media. Tom Clark brought it up at the 2019 annual board meeting because of the return address pot-stirring. I explained it there too. Like I said, it's on the record.
I think insinuating the addresses were mishandled is a deliberate twisting of honest efforts to scramble to get uncensored candidate statements out to voters on short notice. We just didn't have a lot of time, and Bruce was very generous in writing a cover letter.
Again, candidates are allowed the use of the mailing lists for election purposes.
So, no, there was no breach. Clayton knows all this.
Saying it the way he did is a cheap shot at me, Patrick, Bruce Perens, and ORI.
-Michelle W5NYV
On Sun, Jul 12, 2020, 19:11 Kevin via AMSAT-BB [email protected] wrote:
Hello All,
In a previous email to the BB I posted the link to the letter we allreceived as members.
https://www.amsat.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/20200710_AMSAT_Le...
I was re-reading it and something caught my eye that I had missed before.
"AMSAT did not provide a copy of its membership mailing addresses to Open Research Institute."
Just how was our mailing list compromised? This seems like a seriousbreech of security, was this a hack? was any other information lost? was it ever found out how it happened? is our mailing list as they say "out in the wind"?
Michelle could you possibly check from the ORI side and backtrack how ORI came into possession of the AMSAT mailing list, was it something that was procured online?
AMSAT needs to follow up on this privacy issue and report back what it found and any steps that were taken to prevent this from happening in the future.
I look forward to an answer
73 Kevin WA7FWF #19623
Sent via [email protected]. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership.
Opinions
expressed are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views of AMSAT-NA. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite
program!
Subscription settings: https://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
Sent via [email protected]. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views of AMSAT-NA. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: https://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
Sent via [email protected]. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views of AMSAT-NA. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: https://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
Hans,
I tend to agree with you as without some trust there is no possible collaboration and team work, and also agree that only people working does mistakes (we all do) and the ones doing nothing cannot surely do so.
I am a member of AMSAT-NA and also an Ambassador of AMSAT-NA. I really regret this situation, In spite having my own personal opinion about the parties in dispute and that I am sure that such war (most probably both sides have good intentions) could have been easily been avoided with just dialog and at least not been thrown on the BB which seems to have become a battle field instead of an exchange forum, this is sad.
I will vote at next election and hope this situation will end soon, I just hope that US will catch up in the Ham satellite field (was a leader for many year and this is surely now over as you rightly pointed out). I therefore applied for AMSAT-DL membership a few days ago and if all this continues I will probably/regretfully not renew my AMSAT-NA subscription.
I therefore again appeal to the Board members to sit down around a table (e.g. Zoom) and try to work together, more this BB does not need these politics or electoral propaganda, so many mails to delete every day (starting to be stressful) that if it continues I will surely unsubscribe.
I just hope my humble message will be heard.
73
Jean Marc (3B8DU)
On Jul 13, 2020, at 4:02 PM, Hans BX2ABT via AMSAT-BB [email protected] wrote:
On 7/13/20 7:32 PM, David Swanson via AMSAT-BB wrote:
Spin Spin Spin.
I think this is the biggest problem in the world right now.
People simply don't want to believe each other any more, or even entertain the thought that the "opponent" might be (partially) right or acting in good faith. Mistakes cannot be forgiven, because they are always made with malicious intent. And one's own actions are always right, because the other party is always wrong.
The trenches are dug, the weapons are loaded: let's go to war.
In the meantime the Russians give us Sputnik RS-44 (almost MEO), the Chinese shoot cool experiments into space (albeit with the quality of most stuff made in China) and the Germans achieve the first geo-stationary amateur payload. What does AMSAT-NA achieve? The world is already shaking its head when the USA are mentioned because of how it handles COVID-19. Now the amateur radio world laughs at how AMSAT-NA is handling itself. To quote your great leader: "So sad!"
73 de Hans (BX2ABT)
P.S. not an AMSAT-NA member, just here to share and learn about satellites. Now ducking for incoming flak.
The simple truth here is Director Thompson took the AMSAT member database, and handed it over to a 3rd party competing entity for the purpose of solicitation. I know I did not give ORI my home address, yet ORI sent me a letter. This was a violation of my privacy, and for AMSAT members living in the EU, this was a violation of the law. Any attempt to explain this away is just more lies and deceit from Director Thompson about the shady practices they have engaged in over the past few years. As I keep saying, this isn't a one time thing, this is a pattern of reprehensible behavior that is unbecoming of an elected position and this community. Director Thompson and Director Stoddard should resign.
-Dave, KG5CCI
On Mon, Jul 13, 2020 at 5:33 AM Michelle Thompson via AMSAT-BB < [email protected]> wrote:
Yes, I can.
That part of Clayton's letter is wrong and has been repeatedly clarified before. Including at the 2019 annual board meeting, where Tom Clark asked me about it, as part of the record.
Clayton Coleman was secretary in 2019.
He ran the election.
He decided that candidate statements were limited in length to 350 words, would be subject to editorial control by AMSAT, and could not include links. These new rules were given to us right before the 4th of July holiday with a deadline of the 7th.
This is different than any election before, where statements went directly to the printer from the candidate, were not limited in length, and no one from AMSAT leadership (who might be running for reelection themselves) had any control over the content of their challengers' statements.
We got these rules right before ballots went out. We (four challengers) already had normal-sized statements on the web and they had been up six weeks at that point. Those were the ones we wanted to use, and link to.
We knew that as candidates, we had the right to request the mailing list, and send our own statements, independent of the ballot.
I requested the address list and got the DBASE4 export.
Bruce Perens had already written a letter of support and distributed it widely on the web. It introduced us and included our four full bios and statements.
I asked Bruce if we could use his letter in the mailing. He said yes. Since he was President of Open Research Institute at the time, he wanted the return address to not be his private home address, but a business address. That was ORI's address. He was the author of the endorsement, so I used his preferred return address.
I converted the DBASE4 to a more useful format, fixed the 50 or so undeliverable addresses, and found an inexpensive printer. Then I sent the letter from Bruce to the printer, with the bios and statements.
That turned out to be a good thing. Bios and statements were not included with the ballots mailed out, at all.
If we had not sent the letter, then name recognition would be the primary factor. We were running against well-known people.
We complained about this. It was unusual departure from the past and seemed set up to let leadership benefit from being incumbents.
The original proposal from Clayton was for an electronic only ballot. Patrick said that the bylaws were a bit clunky here and it did need to be mailed out on paper. Paper was required.
This is a big reason why I made a motion at our one board meeting, in March, for a bylaws committee.
This bylaw isn't hard to fix. There's lots of examples out there of organizations doing electronic voting with working published bylaws.
Bruce made it very clear, when the incumbents stirred up the pot about the return address, that it was an endorsement from him, this was commonly done in political campaigns, and it would be grossly improper for me to use AMSATs return address because that would make it look like Bruce was speaking for or was from AMSAT. That was not going to happen. *That* would be improper.
No one candidate wanted their personal address used as a return address. We were mailing this as a slate and splitting the cost. We didn't have time or funds to make an organization or rent a box for one letter on short notice. The printer required a real return address.
No one had the address list except the candidates. Namely me because I contracted the printer and handled the DBASE4 address conversion. That is a neat story in and of itself,, for another time.
Bruce only sent the text to me and chipped in some money for postage.
The printing was automated in Van Nuys, CA.
All of this is known to Clayton Coleman and his friends on the board that signed the statement from this week. It has been explained by Bruce publicly, and by me several times on social media. Tom Clark brought it up at the 2019 annual board meeting because of the return address pot-stirring. I explained it there too. Like I said, it's on the record.
I think insinuating the addresses were mishandled is a deliberate twisting of honest efforts to scramble to get uncensored candidate statements out to voters on short notice. We just didn't have a lot of time, and Bruce was very generous in writing a cover letter.
Again, candidates are allowed the use of the mailing lists for election purposes.
So, no, there was no breach. Clayton knows all this.
Saying it the way he did is a cheap shot at me, Patrick, Bruce Perens, and ORI.
-Michelle W5NYV
On Sun, Jul 12, 2020, 19:11 Kevin via AMSAT-BB [email protected] wrote:
Hello All,
In a previous email to the BB I posted the link to the letter we all received as members.
https://www.amsat.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/20200710_AMSAT_Le...
I was re-reading it and something caught my eye that I had missed before.
"AMSAT did not provide a copy of its membership mailing addresses to Open Research Institute."
Just how was our mailing list compromised? This seems like a seriousbreech of security, was this a hack? was any other information lost? was it ever found out how it happened? is our mailing list as they say "out in the wind"?
Michelle could you possibly check from the ORI side and backtrack how ORI came into possession of the AMSAT mailing list, was it something that was procured online?
AMSAT needs to follow up on this privacy issue and report back what it found and any steps that were taken to prevent this from happening in the future.
I look forward to an answer
73 Kevin WA7FWF #19623
Sent via [email protected]. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership.
Opinions
expressed are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views of AMSAT-NA. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite
program!
Subscription settings: https://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
Sent via [email protected]. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views of AMSAT-NA. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: https://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
Sent via [email protected]. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views of AMSAT-NA. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: https://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
Sent via [email protected]. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views of AMSAT-NA. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: https://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
No database went anywhere except to candidates. This is allowed in the bylaws.
Then, an automated bulk mail printing server was used. I recommended the company to Brennan Price for this year's mailing. Good service, inexpensive.
Return addresses don't magically transfer information.
-Michelle W5NYV
On Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 04:32 David Swanson [email protected] wrote:
Spin Spin Spin. The simple truth here is Director Thompson took the AMSAT member database, and handed it over to a 3rd party competing entity for the purpose of solicitation. I know I did not give ORI my home address, yet ORI sent me a letter. This was a violation of my privacy, and for AMSAT members living in the EU, this was a violation of the law. Any attempt to explain this away is just more lies and deceit from Director Thompson about the shady practices they have engaged in over the past few years. As I keep saying, this isn't a one time thing, this is a pattern of reprehensible behavior that is unbecoming of an elected position and this community. Director Thompson and Director Stoddard should resign.
-Dave, KG5CCI
On Mon, Jul 13, 2020 at 5:33 AM Michelle Thompson via AMSAT-BB < [email protected]> wrote:
Yes, I can.
That part of Clayton's letter is wrong and has been repeatedly clarified before. Including at the 2019 annual board meeting, where Tom Clark asked me about it, as part of the record.
Clayton Coleman was secretary in 2019.
He ran the election.
He decided that candidate statements were limited in length to 350 words, would be subject to editorial control by AMSAT, and could not include links. These new rules were given to us right before the 4th of July holiday with a deadline of the 7th.
This is different than any election before, where statements went directly to the printer from the candidate, were not limited in length, and no one from AMSAT leadership (who might be running for reelection themselves) had any control over the content of their challengers' statements.
We got these rules right before ballots went out. We (four challengers) already had normal-sized statements on the web and they had been up six weeks at that point. Those were the ones we wanted to use, and link to.
We knew that as candidates, we had the right to request the mailing list, and send our own statements, independent of the ballot.
I requested the address list and got the DBASE4 export.
Bruce Perens had already written a letter of support and distributed it widely on the web. It introduced us and included our four full bios and statements.
I asked Bruce if we could use his letter in the mailing. He said yes. Since he was President of Open Research Institute at the time, he wanted the return address to not be his private home address, but a business address. That was ORI's address. He was the author of the endorsement, so I used his preferred return address.
I converted the DBASE4 to a more useful format, fixed the 50 or so undeliverable addresses, and found an inexpensive printer. Then I sent the letter from Bruce to the printer, with the bios and statements.
That turned out to be a good thing. Bios and statements were not included with the ballots mailed out, at all.
If we had not sent the letter, then name recognition would be the primary factor. We were running against well-known people.
We complained about this. It was unusual departure from the past and seemed set up to let leadership benefit from being incumbents.
The original proposal from Clayton was for an electronic only ballot. Patrick said that the bylaws were a bit clunky here and it did need to be mailed out on paper. Paper was required.
This is a big reason why I made a motion at our one board meeting, in March, for a bylaws committee.
This bylaw isn't hard to fix. There's lots of examples out there of organizations doing electronic voting with working published bylaws.
Bruce made it very clear, when the incumbents stirred up the pot about the return address, that it was an endorsement from him, this was commonly done in political campaigns, and it would be grossly improper for me to use AMSATs return address because that would make it look like Bruce was speaking for or was from AMSAT. That was not going to happen. *That* would be improper.
No one candidate wanted their personal address used as a return address. We were mailing this as a slate and splitting the cost. We didn't have time or funds to make an organization or rent a box for one letter on short notice. The printer required a real return address.
No one had the address list except the candidates. Namely me because I contracted the printer and handled the DBASE4 address conversion. That is a neat story in and of itself,, for another time.
Bruce only sent the text to me and chipped in some money for postage.
The printing was automated in Van Nuys, CA.
All of this is known to Clayton Coleman and his friends on the board that signed the statement from this week. It has been explained by Bruce publicly, and by me several times on social media. Tom Clark brought it up at the 2019 annual board meeting because of the return address pot-stirring. I explained it there too. Like I said, it's on the record.
I think insinuating the addresses were mishandled is a deliberate twisting of honest efforts to scramble to get uncensored candidate statements out to voters on short notice. We just didn't have a lot of time, and Bruce was very generous in writing a cover letter.
Again, candidates are allowed the use of the mailing lists for election purposes.
So, no, there was no breach. Clayton knows all this.
Saying it the way he did is a cheap shot at me, Patrick, Bruce Perens, and ORI.
-Michelle W5NYV
On Sun, Jul 12, 2020, 19:11 Kevin via AMSAT-BB [email protected] wrote:
Hello All,
In a previous email to the BB I posted the link to the letter we all received as members.
https://www.amsat.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/20200710_AMSAT_Le...
I was re-reading it and something caught my eye that I had missed
before.
"AMSAT did not provide a copy of its membership mailing addresses to Open Research Institute."
Just how was our mailing list compromised? This seems like a seriousbreech of security, was this a hack? was any other information lost? was it ever found out how it happened? is our mailing list as they say "out in the wind"?
Michelle could you possibly check from the ORI side and backtrack how ORI came into possession of the AMSAT mailing list, was it something that was procured online?
AMSAT needs to follow up on this privacy issue and report back what it found and any steps that were taken to prevent this from happening in the future.
I look forward to an answer
73 Kevin WA7FWF #19623
Sent via [email protected]. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership.
Opinions
expressed are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views of AMSAT-NA. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite
program!
Subscription settings: https://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
Sent via [email protected]. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views of AMSAT-NA. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: https://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
It's always fun to remind folks tripping over their own feat lying that the internet is forever. From a Bruce Perens Tweet on July 13, 2020:
"Please see my letter on the web, or the paper copy I've mailed to everyone one of you".
Of course the original tweet was deleted, but the wayback machine never forgets. Don't Believe me? http://druidnetworks.com/2020-07-13.png
If you still think the membership list wasn't compromised, I just heard Director Thompson will be auctioning off their ocean front property in Arizona to all the members this year to raise funds for their microwave, digital only, strictly open source crowd funded, vegan, social justice aware cubesat launch to Proxima Centauri. Of course this launch will only come after 10 years of ground station development, but fueled with enough hopes, dreams and promises it will become a reality!
For the rest of us who actually want to keep amateur radio in (real) space and are disgusted at the violations of privacy that occured by 3rd parties working to get Director Thompson and Director Stoddard elected, well, you should know what to do.
-Dave, KG5CCI
On Mon, Jul 13, 2020 at 9:24 AM Michelle Thompson < [email protected]> wrote:
No database went anywhere except to candidates. This is allowed in the bylaws.
Then, an automated bulk mail printing server was used. I recommended the company to Brennan Price for this year's mailing. Good service, inexpensive.
Return addresses don't magically transfer information.
-Michelle W5NYV
On Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 04:32 David Swanson [email protected] wrote:
Spin Spin Spin. The simple truth here is Director Thompson took the AMSAT member database, and handed it over to a 3rd party competing entity for the purpose of solicitation. I know I did not give ORI my home address, yet ORI sent me a letter. This was a violation of my privacy, and for AMSAT members living in the EU, this was a violation of the law. Any attempt to explain this away is just more lies and deceit from Director Thompson about the shady practices they have engaged in over the past few years. As I keep saying, this isn't a one time thing, this is a pattern of reprehensible behavior that is unbecoming of an elected position and this community. Director Thompson and Director Stoddard should resign.
-Dave, KG5CCI
On Mon, Jul 13, 2020 at 5:33 AM Michelle Thompson via AMSAT-BB < [email protected]> wrote:
Yes, I can.
That part of Clayton's letter is wrong and has been repeatedly clarified before. Including at the 2019 annual board meeting, where Tom Clark asked me about it, as part of the record.
Clayton Coleman was secretary in 2019.
He ran the election.
He decided that candidate statements were limited in length to 350 words, would be subject to editorial control by AMSAT, and could not include links. These new rules were given to us right before the 4th of July holiday with a deadline of the 7th.
This is different than any election before, where statements went directly to the printer from the candidate, were not limited in length, and no one from AMSAT leadership (who might be running for reelection themselves) had any control over the content of their challengers' statements.
We got these rules right before ballots went out. We (four challengers) already had normal-sized statements on the web and they had been up six weeks at that point. Those were the ones we wanted to use, and link to.
We knew that as candidates, we had the right to request the mailing list, and send our own statements, independent of the ballot.
I requested the address list and got the DBASE4 export.
Bruce Perens had already written a letter of support and distributed it widely on the web. It introduced us and included our four full bios and statements.
I asked Bruce if we could use his letter in the mailing. He said yes. Since he was President of Open Research Institute at the time, he wanted the return address to not be his private home address, but a business address. That was ORI's address. He was the author of the endorsement, so I used his preferred return address.
I converted the DBASE4 to a more useful format, fixed the 50 or so undeliverable addresses, and found an inexpensive printer. Then I sent the letter from Bruce to the printer, with the bios and statements.
That turned out to be a good thing. Bios and statements were not included with the ballots mailed out, at all.
If we had not sent the letter, then name recognition would be the primary factor. We were running against well-known people.
We complained about this. It was unusual departure from the past and seemed set up to let leadership benefit from being incumbents.
The original proposal from Clayton was for an electronic only ballot. Patrick said that the bylaws were a bit clunky here and it did need to be mailed out on paper. Paper was required.
This is a big reason why I made a motion at our one board meeting, in March, for a bylaws committee.
This bylaw isn't hard to fix. There's lots of examples out there of organizations doing electronic voting with working published bylaws.
Bruce made it very clear, when the incumbents stirred up the pot about the return address, that it was an endorsement from him, this was commonly done in political campaigns, and it would be grossly improper for me to use AMSATs return address because that would make it look like Bruce was speaking for or was from AMSAT. That was not going to happen. *That* would be improper.
No one candidate wanted their personal address used as a return address. We were mailing this as a slate and splitting the cost. We didn't have time or funds to make an organization or rent a box for one letter on short notice. The printer required a real return address.
No one had the address list except the candidates. Namely me because I contracted the printer and handled the DBASE4 address conversion. That is a neat story in and of itself,, for another time.
Bruce only sent the text to me and chipped in some money for postage.
The printing was automated in Van Nuys, CA.
All of this is known to Clayton Coleman and his friends on the board that signed the statement from this week. It has been explained by Bruce publicly, and by me several times on social media. Tom Clark brought it up at the 2019 annual board meeting because of the return address pot-stirring. I explained it there too. Like I said, it's on the record.
I think insinuating the addresses were mishandled is a deliberate twisting of honest efforts to scramble to get uncensored candidate statements out to voters on short notice. We just didn't have a lot of time, and Bruce was very generous in writing a cover letter.
Again, candidates are allowed the use of the mailing lists for election purposes.
So, no, there was no breach. Clayton knows all this.
Saying it the way he did is a cheap shot at me, Patrick, Bruce Perens, and ORI.
-Michelle W5NYV
On Sun, Jul 12, 2020, 19:11 Kevin via AMSAT-BB [email protected] wrote:
Hello All,
In a previous email to the BB I posted the link to the letter we all received as members.
https://www.amsat.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/20200710_AMSAT_Le...
I was re-reading it and something caught my eye that I had missed
before.
"AMSAT did not provide a copy of its membership mailing addresses to Open Research Institute."
Just how was our mailing list compromised? This seems like aserious
breech of security, was this a hack? was any other information lost? was it ever found out how it happened? is our mailing list as they say "out in the wind"?
Michelle could you possibly check from the ORI side and backtrack how ORI came into possession of the AMSAT mailing list, was it something that was procured online?
AMSAT needs to follow up on this privacy issue and report back what it found and any steps that were taken to prevent this from happening in the future.
I look forward to an answer
73 Kevin WA7FWF #19623
Sent via [email protected]. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership.
Opinions
expressed are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views
of
AMSAT-NA. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite
program!
Subscription settings: https://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
Sent via [email protected]. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views of AMSAT-NA. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: https://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
David,
My tweet was NOT deleted, and is still on twitter at https://twitter.com/BrucePerens/status/1154844208458416128 As stated repeatedly, both by myself and Michelle, I did not handle the mailing list, she did. Which was 100% her right as a candidate.
Thanks
Bruce
On Mon, Jul 13, 2020 at 11:26 AM David Swanson via AMSAT-BB < [email protected]> wrote:
It's always fun to remind folks tripping over their own feat lying that the internet is forever. From a Bruce Perens Tweet on July 13, 2020:
"Please see my letter on the web, or the paper copy I've mailed to everyone one of you".
Of course the original tweet was deleted, but the wayback machine never forgets. Don't Believe me? http://druidnetworks.com/2020-07-13.png
If you still think the membership list wasn't compromised, I just heard Director Thompson will be auctioning off their ocean front property in Arizona to all the members this year to raise funds for their microwave, digital only, strictly open source crowd funded, vegan, social justice aware cubesat launch to Proxima Centauri. Of course this launch will only come after 10 years of ground station development, but fueled with enough hopes, dreams and promises it will become a reality!
For the rest of us who actually want to keep amateur radio in (real) space and are disgusted at the violations of privacy that occured by 3rd parties working to get Director Thompson and Director Stoddard elected, well, you should know what to do.
-Dave, KG5CCI
On Mon, Jul 13, 2020 at 9:24 AM Michelle Thompson < [email protected]> wrote:
No database went anywhere except to candidates. This is allowed in the bylaws.
Then, an automated bulk mail printing server was used. I recommended the company to Brennan Price for this year's mailing. Good service, inexpensive.
Return addresses don't magically transfer information.
-Michelle W5NYV
On Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 04:32 David Swanson [email protected]
wrote:
Spin Spin Spin. The simple truth here is Director Thompson took the
AMSAT
member database, and handed it over to a 3rd party competing entity for
the
purpose of solicitation. I know I did not give ORI my home address, yet
ORI
sent me a letter. This was a violation of my privacy, and for AMSAT members living in the EU, this was a violation of the law. Any attempt
to
explain this away is just more lies and deceit from Director Thompson
about
the shady practices they have engaged in over the past few years. As I
keep
saying, this isn't a one time thing, this is a pattern of reprehensible behavior that is unbecoming of an elected position and
this
community. Director Thompson and Director Stoddard should resign.
-Dave, KG5CCI
On Mon, Jul 13, 2020 at 5:33 AM Michelle Thompson via AMSAT-BB < [email protected]> wrote:
Yes, I can.
That part of Clayton's letter is wrong and has been repeatedly
clarified
before. Including at the 2019 annual board meeting, where Tom Clark
asked
me about it, as part of the record.
Clayton Coleman was secretary in 2019.
He ran the election.
He decided that candidate statements were limited in length to 350
words,
would be subject to editorial control by AMSAT, and could not include links. These new rules were given to us right before the 4th of July holiday with a deadline of the 7th.
This is different than any election before, where statements went directly to the printer from the candidate, were not limited in length, and no
one
from AMSAT leadership (who might be running for reelection themselves) had any control over the content of their challengers' statements.
We got these rules right before ballots went out. We (four challengers) already had normal-sized statements on the web and they had been up six weeks at that point. Those were the ones we wanted to use, and link to.
We knew that as candidates, we had the right to request the mailing
list,
and send our own statements, independent of the ballot.
I requested the address list and got the DBASE4 export.
Bruce Perens had already written a letter of support and distributed it widely on the web. It introduced us and included our four full bios and statements.
I asked Bruce if we could use his letter in the mailing. He said yes. Since he was President of Open Research Institute at the time, he wanted the return address to not be his private home address, but a business address. That was ORI's address. He was the author of the endorsement, so I used his preferred return address.
I converted the DBASE4 to a more useful format, fixed the 50 or so undeliverable addresses, and found an inexpensive printer. Then I sent the letter from Bruce to the printer, with the bios and statements.
That turned out to be a good thing. Bios and statements were not
included
with the ballots mailed out, at all.
If we had not sent the letter, then name recognition would be the
primary
factor. We were running against well-known people.
We complained about this. It was unusual departure from the past and seemed set up to let leadership benefit from being incumbents.
The original proposal from Clayton was for an electronic only ballot. Patrick said that the bylaws were a bit clunky here and it did need to
be
mailed out on paper. Paper was required.
This is a big reason why I made a motion at our one board meeting, in March, for a bylaws committee.
This bylaw isn't hard to fix. There's lots of examples out there of organizations doing electronic voting with working published bylaws.
Bruce made it very clear, when the incumbents stirred up the pot about the return address, that it was an endorsement from him, this was commonly done in political campaigns, and it would be grossly improper for me to use AMSATs return address because that would make it look like Bruce was speaking for or was from AMSAT. That was not going to happen. *That* would be improper.
No one candidate wanted their personal address used as a return
address.
We were mailing this as a slate and splitting the cost. We didn't have
time
or funds to make an organization or rent a box for one letter on short notice. The printer required a real return address.
No one had the address list except the candidates. Namely me because I contracted the printer and handled the DBASE4 address conversion. That is a neat story in and of itself,, for another time.
Bruce only sent the text to me and chipped in some money for postage.
The printing was automated in Van Nuys, CA.
All of this is known to Clayton Coleman and his friends on the board
that
signed the statement from this week. It has been explained by Bruce publicly, and by me several times on social media. Tom Clark brought it up at the 2019 annual board meeting because of the return address pot-stirring. I explained it there too. Like I said, it's on the
record.
I think insinuating the addresses were mishandled is a deliberate twisting of honest efforts to scramble to get uncensored candidate statements
out
to voters on short notice. We just didn't have a lot of time, and Bruce
was
very generous in writing a cover letter.
Again, candidates are allowed the use of the mailing lists for election purposes.
So, no, there was no breach. Clayton knows all this.
Saying it the way he did is a cheap shot at me, Patrick, Bruce Perens, and ORI.
-Michelle W5NYV
On Sun, Jul 12, 2020, 19:11 Kevin via AMSAT-BB [email protected] wrote:
Hello All,
In a previous email to the BB I posted the link to the letter we
all
received as members.
https://www.amsat.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/20200710_AMSAT_Le...
I was re-reading it and something caught my eye that I had missed
before.
"AMSAT did not provide a copy of its membership mailing addresses to Open Research Institute."
Just how was our mailing list compromised? This seems like aserious
breech of security, was this a hack? was any other information lost? was it ever found out how it happened? is our mailing list as they
say
"out in the wind"?
Michelle could you possibly check from the ORI side and backtrack how ORI came into possession of the AMSAT mailing list, was it something that was procured online?
AMSAT needs to follow up on this privacy issue and report back what
it
found and any steps that were taken to prevent this from happening in the future.
I look forward to an answer
73 Kevin WA7FWF #19623
Sent via [email protected]. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum
available
to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership.
Opinions
expressed are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views
of
AMSAT-NA. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite
program!
Subscription settings:
https://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
Sent via [email protected]. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views
of
AMSAT-NA. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: https://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
Sent via [email protected]. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views of AMSAT-NA. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: https://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
My apologies on the Twitter claim - when I tried loading it from source nothing was displaying pre January 28th, 2020 - the day of your 'I am signing off of social networking' declaration. (How'd that go btw?) I only assumed you had deleted your tweets.
As to your never ending story changing about the mailing list, I was born at night, but it wasn't last night. Go try your story on another mark.
-Dave, KG5CCI
On Mon, Jul 13, 2020 at 2:45 PM Bruce Perens [email protected] wrote:
David,
My tweet was NOT deleted, and is still on twitter at https://twitter.com/BrucePerens/status/1154844208458416128 As stated repeatedly, both by myself and Michelle, I did not handle the mailing list, she did. Which was 100% her right as a candidate.
Thanks BruceOn Mon, Jul 13, 2020 at 11:26 AM David Swanson via AMSAT-BB < [email protected]> wrote:
It's always fun to remind folks tripping over their own feat lying that the internet is forever. From a Bruce Perens Tweet on July 13, 2020:
"Please see my letter on the web, or the paper copy I've mailed to everyone one of you".
Of course the original tweet was deleted, but the wayback machine never forgets. Don't Believe me? http://druidnetworks.com/2020-07-13.png
If you still think the membership list wasn't compromised, I just heard Director Thompson will be auctioning off their ocean front property in Arizona to all the members this year to raise funds for their microwave, digital only, strictly open source crowd funded, vegan, social justice aware cubesat launch to Proxima Centauri. Of course this launch will only come after 10 years of ground station development, but fueled with enough hopes, dreams and promises it will become a reality!
For the rest of us who actually want to keep amateur radio in (real) space and are disgusted at the violations of privacy that occured by 3rd parties working to get Director Thompson and Director Stoddard elected, well, you should know what to do.
-Dave, KG5CCI
On Mon, Jul 13, 2020 at 9:24 AM Michelle Thompson < [email protected]> wrote:
No database went anywhere except to candidates. This is allowed in the bylaws.
Then, an automated bulk mail printing server was used. I recommended the company to Brennan Price for this year's mailing. Good service, inexpensive.
Return addresses don't magically transfer information.
-Michelle W5NYV
On Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 04:32 David Swanson [email protected]
wrote:
Spin Spin Spin. The simple truth here is Director Thompson took the
AMSAT
member database, and handed it over to a 3rd party competing entity
for the
purpose of solicitation. I know I did not give ORI my home address,
yet ORI
sent me a letter. This was a violation of my privacy, and for AMSAT members living in the EU, this was a violation of the law. Any attempt
to
explain this away is just more lies and deceit from Director Thompson
about
the shady practices they have engaged in over the past few years. As I
keep
saying, this isn't a one time thing, this is a pattern of reprehensible behavior that is unbecoming of an elected position and
this
community. Director Thompson and Director Stoddard should resign.
-Dave, KG5CCI
On Mon, Jul 13, 2020 at 5:33 AM Michelle Thompson via AMSAT-BB < [email protected]> wrote:
Yes, I can.
That part of Clayton's letter is wrong and has been repeatedly
clarified
before. Including at the 2019 annual board meeting, where Tom Clark
asked
me about it, as part of the record.
Clayton Coleman was secretary in 2019.
He ran the election.
He decided that candidate statements were limited in length to 350
words,
would be subject to editorial control by AMSAT, and could not include links. These new rules were given to us right before the 4th of July holiday with a deadline of the 7th.
This is different than any election before, where statements went directly to the printer from the candidate, were not limited in length, and no
one
from AMSAT leadership (who might be running for reelection themselves) had any control over the content of their challengers' statements.
We got these rules right before ballots went out. We (four
challengers)
already had normal-sized statements on the web and they had been up
six
weeks at that point. Those were the ones we wanted to use, and link
to.
We knew that as candidates, we had the right to request the mailing
list,
and send our own statements, independent of the ballot.
I requested the address list and got the DBASE4 export.
Bruce Perens had already written a letter of support and distributed
it
widely on the web. It introduced us and included our four full bios
and
statements.
I asked Bruce if we could use his letter in the mailing. He said yes. Since he was President of Open Research Institute at the time, he wanted the return address to not be his private home address, but a business address. That was ORI's address. He was the author of the endorsement, so I
used
his preferred return address.
I converted the DBASE4 to a more useful format, fixed the 50 or so undeliverable addresses, and found an inexpensive printer. Then I sent the letter from Bruce to the printer, with the bios and statements.
That turned out to be a good thing. Bios and statements were not
included
with the ballots mailed out, at all.
If we had not sent the letter, then name recognition would be the
primary
factor. We were running against well-known people.
We complained about this. It was unusual departure from the past and seemed set up to let leadership benefit from being incumbents.
The original proposal from Clayton was for an electronic only ballot. Patrick said that the bylaws were a bit clunky here and it did need
to be
mailed out on paper. Paper was required.
This is a big reason why I made a motion at our one board meeting, in March, for a bylaws committee.
This bylaw isn't hard to fix. There's lots of examples out there of organizations doing electronic voting with working published bylaws.
Bruce made it very clear, when the incumbents stirred up the pot about the return address, that it was an endorsement from him, this was commonly done in political campaigns, and it would be grossly improper for me to use AMSATs return address because that would make it look like Bruce was speaking for or was from AMSAT. That was not going to happen. *That* would be improper.
No one candidate wanted their personal address used as a return
address.
We were mailing this as a slate and splitting the cost. We didn't have
time
or funds to make an organization or rent a box for one letter on short notice. The printer required a real return address.
No one had the address list except the candidates. Namely me because I contracted the printer and handled the DBASE4 address conversion. That is a neat story in and of itself,, for another time.
Bruce only sent the text to me and chipped in some money for postage.
The printing was automated in Van Nuys, CA.
All of this is known to Clayton Coleman and his friends on the board
that
signed the statement from this week. It has been explained by Bruce publicly, and by me several times on social media. Tom Clark brought
it
up at the 2019 annual board meeting because of the return address pot-stirring. I explained it there too. Like I said, it's on the
record.
I think insinuating the addresses were mishandled is a deliberate twisting of honest efforts to scramble to get uncensored candidate statements
out
to voters on short notice. We just didn't have a lot of time, and Bruce
was
very generous in writing a cover letter.
Again, candidates are allowed the use of the mailing lists for
election
purposes.
So, no, there was no breach. Clayton knows all this.
Saying it the way he did is a cheap shot at me, Patrick, Bruce Perens, and ORI.
-Michelle W5NYV
On Sun, Jul 12, 2020, 19:11 Kevin via AMSAT-BB [email protected] wrote:
Hello All,
In a previous email to the BB I posted the link to the letter we
all
received as members.
https://www.amsat.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/20200710_AMSAT_Le...
I was re-reading it and something caught my eye that I had missed
before.
"AMSAT did not provide a copy of its membership mailing addresses to Open Research Institute."
Just how was our mailing list compromised? This seems like aserious
breech of security, was this a hack? was any other information lost? was it ever found out how it happened? is our mailing list as they
say
"out in the wind"?
Michelle could you possibly check from the ORI side and backtrack
how
ORI came into possession of the AMSAT mailing list, was it something that was procured online?
AMSAT needs to follow up on this privacy issue and report back what
it
found and any steps that were taken to prevent this from happening
in
the future.
I look forward to an answer
73 Kevin WA7FWF #19623
Sent via [email protected]. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum
available
to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership.
Opinions
expressed are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official
views
of
AMSAT-NA. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite
program!
Subscription settings:
https://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
Sent via [email protected]. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views
of
AMSAT-NA. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings:
https://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
Sent via [email protected]. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views of AMSAT-NA. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: https://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
-- Bruce Perens - CEO at stealth startup. I'll tell you what it is eventually :-)
OK, Dave, you were not born yesterday :-) As I have said, I never touched the mailing list, and never had to. I contributed $500 for postage, the rest was provided by the candidates. But if I *had* touched the mailing list, what nefarious things would I have done with it? You are mostly all listed on QRZ, etc. Am I the guy sending you those mails about how Ed McMahon will hand you the million-dollar check from Publishers Clearing House?
What I am getting at here is that people don't violate rules for really stupid and unnecessary reasons. There was a simple way to send the letter within the rules, and we did it.
Thanks
Bruce
On Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 12:55 PM David Swanson [email protected] wrote:
My apologies on the Twitter claim - when I tried loading it from source nothing was displaying pre January 28th, 2020 - the day of your 'I am signing off of social networking' declaration. (How'd that go btw?) I only assumed you had deleted your tweets.
As to your never ending story changing about the mailing list, I was born at night, but it wasn't last night. Go try your story on another mark.
-Dave, KG5CCI
On Mon, Jul 13, 2020 at 2:45 PM Bruce Perens [email protected] wrote:
David,
My tweet was NOT deleted, and is still on twitter at https://twitter.com/BrucePerens/status/1154844208458416128 As stated repeatedly, both by myself and Michelle, I did not handle the mailing list, she did. Which was 100% her right as a candidate.
Thanks BruceOn Mon, Jul 13, 2020 at 11:26 AM David Swanson via AMSAT-BB < [email protected]> wrote:
It's always fun to remind folks tripping over their own feat lying that the internet is forever. From a Bruce Perens Tweet on July 13, 2020:
"Please see my letter on the web, or the paper copy I've mailed to everyone one of you".
Of course the original tweet was deleted, but the wayback machine never forgets. Don't Believe me? http://druidnetworks.com/2020-07-13.png
If you still think the membership list wasn't compromised, I just heard Director Thompson will be auctioning off their ocean front property in Arizona to all the members this year to raise funds for their microwave, digital only, strictly open source crowd funded, vegan, social justice aware cubesat launch to Proxima Centauri. Of course this launch will only come after 10 years of ground station development, but fueled with enough hopes, dreams and promises it will become a reality!
For the rest of us who actually want to keep amateur radio in (real) space and are disgusted at the violations of privacy that occured by 3rd parties working to get Director Thompson and Director Stoddard elected, well, you should know what to do.
-Dave, KG5CCI
On Mon, Jul 13, 2020 at 9:24 AM Michelle Thompson < [email protected]> wrote:
No database went anywhere except to candidates. This is allowed in the bylaws.
Then, an automated bulk mail printing server was used. I recommended
the
company to Brennan Price for this year's mailing. Good service, inexpensive.
Return addresses don't magically transfer information.
-Michelle W5NYV
On Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 04:32 David Swanson [email protected]
wrote:
Spin Spin Spin. The simple truth here is Director Thompson took the
AMSAT
member database, and handed it over to a 3rd party competing entity
for the
purpose of solicitation. I know I did not give ORI my home address,
yet ORI
sent me a letter. This was a violation of my privacy, and for AMSAT members living in the EU, this was a violation of the law. Any
attempt to
explain this away is just more lies and deceit from Director Thompson
about
the shady practices they have engaged in over the past few years. As
I keep
saying, this isn't a one time thing, this is a pattern of reprehensible behavior that is unbecoming of an elected position and
this
community. Director Thompson and Director Stoddard should resign.
-Dave, KG5CCI
On Mon, Jul 13, 2020 at 5:33 AM Michelle Thompson via AMSAT-BB < [email protected]> wrote:
Yes, I can.
That part of Clayton's letter is wrong and has been repeatedly
clarified
before. Including at the 2019 annual board meeting, where Tom Clark
asked
me about it, as part of the record.
Clayton Coleman was secretary in 2019.
He ran the election.
He decided that candidate statements were limited in length to 350
words,
would be subject to editorial control by AMSAT, and could not include links. These new rules were given to us right before the 4th of July holiday with a deadline of the 7th.
This is different than any election before, where statements went directly to the printer from the candidate, were not limited in length, and
no one
from AMSAT leadership (who might be running for reelection
themselves)
had any control over the content of their challengers' statements.
We got these rules right before ballots went out. We (four
challengers)
already had normal-sized statements on the web and they had been up
six
weeks at that point. Those were the ones we wanted to use, and link
to.
We knew that as candidates, we had the right to request the mailing
list,
and send our own statements, independent of the ballot.
I requested the address list and got the DBASE4 export.
Bruce Perens had already written a letter of support and distributed
it
widely on the web. It introduced us and included our four full bios
and
statements.
I asked Bruce if we could use his letter in the mailing. He said yes. Since he was President of Open Research Institute at the time, he wanted
the
return address to not be his private home address, but a business address. That was ORI's address. He was the author of the endorsement, so I
used
his preferred return address.
I converted the DBASE4 to a more useful format, fixed the 50 or so undeliverable addresses, and found an inexpensive printer. Then I
sent
the letter from Bruce to the printer, with the bios and statements.
That turned out to be a good thing. Bios and statements were not
included
with the ballots mailed out, at all.
If we had not sent the letter, then name recognition would be the
primary
factor. We were running against well-known people.
We complained about this. It was unusual departure from the past and seemed set up to let leadership benefit from being incumbents.
The original proposal from Clayton was for an electronic only ballot. Patrick said that the bylaws were a bit clunky here and it did need
to be
mailed out on paper. Paper was required.
This is a big reason why I made a motion at our one board meeting,
in
March, for a bylaws committee.
This bylaw isn't hard to fix. There's lots of examples out there of organizations doing electronic voting with working published bylaws.
Bruce made it very clear, when the incumbents stirred up the pot
about
the return address, that it was an endorsement from him, this was
commonly
done in political campaigns, and it would be grossly improper for me to
use
AMSATs return address because that would make it look like Bruce was speaking for or was from AMSAT. That was not going to happen. *That* would be improper.
No one candidate wanted their personal address used as a return
address.
We were mailing this as a slate and splitting the cost. We didn't have
time
or funds to make an organization or rent a box for one letter on short notice. The printer required a real return address.
No one had the address list except the candidates. Namely me because
I
contracted the printer and handled the DBASE4 address conversion.
That
is a neat story in and of itself,, for another time.
Bruce only sent the text to me and chipped in some money for postage.
The printing was automated in Van Nuys, CA.
All of this is known to Clayton Coleman and his friends on the board
that
signed the statement from this week. It has been explained by Bruce publicly, and by me several times on social media. Tom Clark brought
it
up at the 2019 annual board meeting because of the return address pot-stirring. I explained it there too. Like I said, it's on the
record.
I think insinuating the addresses were mishandled is a deliberate twisting of honest efforts to scramble to get uncensored candidate statements
out
to voters on short notice. We just didn't have a lot of time, and Bruce
was
very generous in writing a cover letter.
Again, candidates are allowed the use of the mailing lists for
election
purposes.
So, no, there was no breach. Clayton knows all this.
Saying it the way he did is a cheap shot at me, Patrick, Bruce
Perens,
and ORI.
-Michelle W5NYV
On Sun, Jul 12, 2020, 19:11 Kevin via AMSAT-BB [email protected] wrote:
> Hello All, > > In a previous email to the BB I posted the link to the letter
we all
> received as members. > > >
https://www.amsat.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/20200710_AMSAT_Le...
> > I was re-reading it and something caught my eye that I had missed before. > > "AMSAT did not provide a copy of its membership mailing addresses
to
> Open Research Institute." > > Just how was our mailing list compromised? This seems like a serious > breech of security, was this a hack? was any other information
lost?
> was it ever found out how it happened? is our mailing list as they
say
> "out in the wind"? > > Michelle could you possibly check from the ORI side and backtrack
how
> ORI came into possession of the AMSAT mailing list, was it
something
> that was procured online? > > AMSAT needs to follow up on this privacy issue and report back
what it
> found and any steps that were taken to prevent this from happening
in
> the future. > > > I look forward to an answer > > 73 Kevin WA7FWF #19623 > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Sent via [email protected]. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum
available
> to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership. Opinions > expressed > are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official
views
of > AMSAT-NA. > Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! > Subscription settings:
https://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
> _______________________________________________ Sent via [email protected]. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum
available
to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official
views of
AMSAT-NA. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings:
https://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
Sent via [email protected]. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views of AMSAT-NA. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: https://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
-- Bruce Perens - CEO at stealth startup. I'll tell you what it is eventually :-)
By your own words, it was YOUR letter, in a letter YOU sent. No matter how many times you try and repeat the same line now - you've already proven yourself to be a fraud.
And by the way, people often violate the rules for stupid and unnecassary reasons. It's very rarely the big lie you get caught in, it's all the smaller ones you use to cover the big one up.
-Dave, KG5CCI
Mr David Swanson,
Your vicious, sarcastic, and personal attacks against a duly elected board member and more importantly another human being are totally uncalled for and a total embarrassment to yourself.
STOP IT!
Stefan VE4SW
On Mon, Jul 13, 2020 at 2:28 PM David Swanson via AMSAT-BB < [email protected]> wrote:
It's always fun to remind folks tripping over their own feat lying that the internet is forever. From a Bruce Perens Tweet on July 13, 2020:
"Please see my letter on the web, or the paper copy I've mailed to everyone one of you".
Of course the original tweet was deleted, but the wayback machine never forgets. Don't Believe me? http://druidnetworks.com/2020-07-13.png
If you still think the membership list wasn't compromised, I just heard Director Thompson will be auctioning off their ocean front property in Arizona to all the members this year to raise funds for their microwave, digital only, strictly open source crowd funded, vegan, social justice aware cubesat launch to Proxima Centauri. Of course this launch will only come after 10 years of ground station development, but fueled with enough hopes, dreams and promises it will become a reality!
For the rest of us who actually want to keep amateur radio in (real) space and are disgusted at the violations of privacy that occured by 3rd parties working to get Director Thompson and Director Stoddard elected, well, you should know what to do.
-Dave, KG5CCI
On Mon, Jul 13, 2020 at 9:24 AM Michelle Thompson < [email protected]> wrote:
No database went anywhere except to candidates. This is allowed in the bylaws.
Then, an automated bulk mail printing server was used. I recommended the company to Brennan Price for this year's mailing. Good service, inexpensive.
Return addresses don't magically transfer information.
-Michelle W5NYV
On Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 04:32 David Swanson [email protected]
wrote:
Spin Spin Spin. The simple truth here is Director Thompson took the
AMSAT
member database, and handed it over to a 3rd party competing entity for
the
purpose of solicitation. I know I did not give ORI my home address, yet
ORI
sent me a letter. This was a violation of my privacy, and for AMSAT members living in the EU, this was a violation of the law. Any attempt
to
explain this away is just more lies and deceit from Director Thompson
about
the shady practices they have engaged in over the past few years. As I
keep
saying, this isn't a one time thing, this is a pattern of reprehensible behavior that is unbecoming of an elected position and
this
community. Director Thompson and Director Stoddard should resign.
-Dave, KG5CCI
On Mon, Jul 13, 2020 at 5:33 AM Michelle Thompson via AMSAT-BB < [email protected]> wrote:
Yes, I can.
That part of Clayton's letter is wrong and has been repeatedly
clarified
before. Including at the 2019 annual board meeting, where Tom Clark
asked
me about it, as part of the record.
Clayton Coleman was secretary in 2019.
He ran the election.
He decided that candidate statements were limited in length to 350
words,
would be subject to editorial control by AMSAT, and could not include links. These new rules were given to us right before the 4th of July holiday with a deadline of the 7th.
This is different than any election before, where statements went directly to the printer from the candidate, were not limited in length, and no
one
from AMSAT leadership (who might be running for reelection themselves) had any control over the content of their challengers' statements.
We got these rules right before ballots went out. We (four challengers) already had normal-sized statements on the web and they had been up six weeks at that point. Those were the ones we wanted to use, and link to.
We knew that as candidates, we had the right to request the mailing
list,
and send our own statements, independent of the ballot.
I requested the address list and got the DBASE4 export.
Bruce Perens had already written a letter of support and distributed it widely on the web. It introduced us and included our four full bios and statements.
I asked Bruce if we could use his letter in the mailing. He said yes. Since he was President of Open Research Institute at the time, he wanted the return address to not be his private home address, but a business address. That was ORI's address. He was the author of the endorsement, so I used his preferred return address.
I converted the DBASE4 to a more useful format, fixed the 50 or so undeliverable addresses, and found an inexpensive printer. Then I sent the letter from Bruce to the printer, with the bios and statements.
That turned out to be a good thing. Bios and statements were not
included
with the ballots mailed out, at all.
If we had not sent the letter, then name recognition would be the
primary
factor. We were running against well-known people.
We complained about this. It was unusual departure from the past and seemed set up to let leadership benefit from being incumbents.
The original proposal from Clayton was for an electronic only ballot. Patrick said that the bylaws were a bit clunky here and it did need to
be
mailed out on paper. Paper was required.
This is a big reason why I made a motion at our one board meeting, in March, for a bylaws committee.
This bylaw isn't hard to fix. There's lots of examples out there of organizations doing electronic voting with working published bylaws.
Bruce made it very clear, when the incumbents stirred up the pot about the return address, that it was an endorsement from him, this was commonly done in political campaigns, and it would be grossly improper for me to use AMSATs return address because that would make it look like Bruce was speaking for or was from AMSAT. That was not going to happen. *That* would be improper.
No one candidate wanted their personal address used as a return
address.
We were mailing this as a slate and splitting the cost. We didn't have
time
or funds to make an organization or rent a box for one letter on short notice. The printer required a real return address.
No one had the address list except the candidates. Namely me because I contracted the printer and handled the DBASE4 address conversion. That is a neat story in and of itself,, for another time.
Bruce only sent the text to me and chipped in some money for postage.
The printing was automated in Van Nuys, CA.
All of this is known to Clayton Coleman and his friends on the board
that
signed the statement from this week. It has been explained by Bruce publicly, and by me several times on social media. Tom Clark brought it up at the 2019 annual board meeting because of the return address pot-stirring. I explained it there too. Like I said, it's on the
record.
I think insinuating the addresses were mishandled is a deliberate twisting of honest efforts to scramble to get uncensored candidate statements
out
to voters on short notice. We just didn't have a lot of time, and Bruce
was
very generous in writing a cover letter.
Again, candidates are allowed the use of the mailing lists for election purposes.
So, no, there was no breach. Clayton knows all this.
Saying it the way he did is a cheap shot at me, Patrick, Bruce Perens, and ORI.
-Michelle W5NYV
On Sun, Jul 12, 2020, 19:11 Kevin via AMSAT-BB [email protected] wrote:
Hello All,
In a previous email to the BB I posted the link to the letter we
all
received as members.
https://www.amsat.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/20200710_AMSAT_Le...
I was re-reading it and something caught my eye that I had missed
before.
"AMSAT did not provide a copy of its membership mailing addresses to Open Research Institute."
Just how was our mailing list compromised? This seems like aserious
breech of security, was this a hack? was any other information lost? was it ever found out how it happened? is our mailing list as they
say
"out in the wind"?
Michelle could you possibly check from the ORI side and backtrack how ORI came into possession of the AMSAT mailing list, was it something that was procured online?
AMSAT needs to follow up on this privacy issue and report back what
it
found and any steps that were taken to prevent this from happening in the future.
I look forward to an answer
73 Kevin WA7FWF #19623
Sent via [email protected]. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum
available
to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership.
Opinions
expressed are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views
of
AMSAT-NA. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite
program!
Subscription settings:
https://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
Sent via [email protected]. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views
of
AMSAT-NA. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: https://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
Sent via [email protected]. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views of AMSAT-NA. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: https://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
Mr Wagener,
People have threatened my friends and members of my community with legal action, they defamed them, and impugned their integrity. They seek to destroy a hobby I care a great deal about. The fact that you don't see what's going on is the embarrassment, not the words I use.
In short, you can go to hell.
-Dave, KG5CCI
On Mon, Jul 13, 2020 at 4:33 PM Stefan Wagener [email protected] wrote:
Mr David Swanson,
Your vicious, sarcastic, and personal attacks against a duly elected board member and more importantly another human being are totally uncalled for and a total embarrassment to yourself.
STOP IT!
Stefan VE4SW
On Mon, Jul 13, 2020 at 2:28 PM David Swanson via AMSAT-BB < [email protected]> wrote:
It's always fun to remind folks tripping over their own feat lying that the internet is forever. From a Bruce Perens Tweet on July 13, 2020:
"Please see my letter on the web, or the paper copy I've mailed to everyone one of you".
Of course the original tweet was deleted, but the wayback machine never forgets. Don't Believe me? http://druidnetworks.com/2020-07-13.png
If you still think the membership list wasn't compromised, I just heard Director Thompson will be auctioning off their ocean front property in Arizona to all the members this year to raise funds for their microwave, digital only, strictly open source crowd funded, vegan, social justice aware cubesat launch to Proxima Centauri. Of course this launch will only come after 10 years of ground station development, but fueled with enough hopes, dreams and promises it will become a reality!
For the rest of us who actually want to keep amateur radio in (real) space and are disgusted at the violations of privacy that occured by 3rd parties working to get Director Thompson and Director Stoddard elected, well, you should know what to do.
-Dave, KG5CCI
On Mon, Jul 13, 2020 at 9:24 AM Michelle Thompson < [email protected]> wrote:
No database went anywhere except to candidates. This is allowed in the bylaws.
Then, an automated bulk mail printing server was used. I recommended the company to Brennan Price for this year's mailing. Good service, inexpensive.
Return addresses don't magically transfer information.
-Michelle W5NYV
On Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 04:32 David Swanson [email protected]
wrote:
Spin Spin Spin. The simple truth here is Director Thompson took the
AMSAT
member database, and handed it over to a 3rd party competing entity
for the
purpose of solicitation. I know I did not give ORI my home address,
yet ORI
sent me a letter. This was a violation of my privacy, and for AMSAT members living in the EU, this was a violation of the law. Any attempt
to
explain this away is just more lies and deceit from Director Thompson
about
the shady practices they have engaged in over the past few years. As I
keep
saying, this isn't a one time thing, this is a pattern of reprehensible behavior that is unbecoming of an elected position and
this
community. Director Thompson and Director Stoddard should resign.
-Dave, KG5CCI
On Mon, Jul 13, 2020 at 5:33 AM Michelle Thompson via AMSAT-BB < [email protected]> wrote:
Yes, I can.
That part of Clayton's letter is wrong and has been repeatedly
clarified
before. Including at the 2019 annual board meeting, where Tom Clark
asked
me about it, as part of the record.
Clayton Coleman was secretary in 2019.
He ran the election.
He decided that candidate statements were limited in length to 350
words,
would be subject to editorial control by AMSAT, and could not include links. These new rules were given to us right before the 4th of July holiday with a deadline of the 7th.
This is different than any election before, where statements went directly to the printer from the candidate, were not limited in length, and no
one
from AMSAT leadership (who might be running for reelection themselves) had any control over the content of their challengers' statements.
We got these rules right before ballots went out. We (four
challengers)
already had normal-sized statements on the web and they had been up
six
weeks at that point. Those were the ones we wanted to use, and link
to.
We knew that as candidates, we had the right to request the mailing
list,
and send our own statements, independent of the ballot.
I requested the address list and got the DBASE4 export.
Bruce Perens had already written a letter of support and distributed
it
widely on the web. It introduced us and included our four full bios
and
statements.
I asked Bruce if we could use his letter in the mailing. He said yes. Since he was President of Open Research Institute at the time, he wanted the return address to not be his private home address, but a business address. That was ORI's address. He was the author of the endorsement, so I
used
his preferred return address.
I converted the DBASE4 to a more useful format, fixed the 50 or so undeliverable addresses, and found an inexpensive printer. Then I sent the letter from Bruce to the printer, with the bios and statements.
That turned out to be a good thing. Bios and statements were not
included
with the ballots mailed out, at all.
If we had not sent the letter, then name recognition would be the
primary
factor. We were running against well-known people.
We complained about this. It was unusual departure from the past and seemed set up to let leadership benefit from being incumbents.
The original proposal from Clayton was for an electronic only ballot. Patrick said that the bylaws were a bit clunky here and it did need
to be
mailed out on paper. Paper was required.
This is a big reason why I made a motion at our one board meeting, in March, for a bylaws committee.
This bylaw isn't hard to fix. There's lots of examples out there of organizations doing electronic voting with working published bylaws.
Bruce made it very clear, when the incumbents stirred up the pot about the return address, that it was an endorsement from him, this was commonly done in political campaigns, and it would be grossly improper for me to use AMSATs return address because that would make it look like Bruce was speaking for or was from AMSAT. That was not going to happen. *That* would be improper.
No one candidate wanted their personal address used as a return
address.
We were mailing this as a slate and splitting the cost. We didn't have
time
or funds to make an organization or rent a box for one letter on short notice. The printer required a real return address.
No one had the address list except the candidates. Namely me because I contracted the printer and handled the DBASE4 address conversion. That is a neat story in and of itself,, for another time.
Bruce only sent the text to me and chipped in some money for postage.
The printing was automated in Van Nuys, CA.
All of this is known to Clayton Coleman and his friends on the board
that
signed the statement from this week. It has been explained by Bruce publicly, and by me several times on social media. Tom Clark brought
it
up at the 2019 annual board meeting because of the return address pot-stirring. I explained it there too. Like I said, it's on the
record.
I think insinuating the addresses were mishandled is a deliberate twisting of honest efforts to scramble to get uncensored candidate statements
out
to voters on short notice. We just didn't have a lot of time, and Bruce
was
very generous in writing a cover letter.
Again, candidates are allowed the use of the mailing lists for
election
purposes.
So, no, there was no breach. Clayton knows all this.
Saying it the way he did is a cheap shot at me, Patrick, Bruce Perens, and ORI.
-Michelle W5NYV
On Sun, Jul 12, 2020, 19:11 Kevin via AMSAT-BB [email protected] wrote:
Hello All,
In a previous email to the BB I posted the link to the letter we
all
received as members.
https://www.amsat.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/20200710_AMSAT_Le...
I was re-reading it and something caught my eye that I had missed
before.
"AMSAT did not provide a copy of its membership mailing addresses to Open Research Institute."
Just how was our mailing list compromised? This seems like aserious
breech of security, was this a hack? was any other information lost? was it ever found out how it happened? is our mailing list as they
say
"out in the wind"?
Michelle could you possibly check from the ORI side and backtrack
how
ORI came into possession of the AMSAT mailing list, was it something that was procured online?
AMSAT needs to follow up on this privacy issue and report back what
it
found and any steps that were taken to prevent this from happening
in
the future.
I look forward to an answer
73 Kevin WA7FWF #19623
Sent via [email protected]. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum
available
to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership.
Opinions
expressed are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official
views
of
AMSAT-NA. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite
program!
Subscription settings:
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Hey Stefan,
All of your annoying, and arrogant, and condescending comments on here over the past few years are an embarrassment to the AMSAT community.
STOP IT!
Warm Regards, Tucker W4FS
On Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 8:13 PM Stefan Wagener via AMSAT-BB < [email protected]> wrote:
Mr David Swanson,
Your vicious, sarcastic, and personal attacks against a duly elected board member and more importantly another human being are totally uncalled for and a total embarrassment to yourself.
STOP IT!
Stefan VE4SW
On Mon, Jul 13, 2020 at 2:28 PM David Swanson via AMSAT-BB < [email protected]> wrote:
It's always fun to remind folks tripping over their own feat lying that
the
internet is forever. From a Bruce Perens Tweet on July 13, 2020:
"Please see my letter on the web, or the paper copy I've mailed to
everyone
one of you".
Of course the original tweet was deleted, but the wayback machine never forgets. Don't Believe me? http://druidnetworks.com/2020-07-13.png
If you still think the membership list wasn't compromised, I just heard Director Thompson will be auctioning off their ocean front property in Arizona to all the members this year to raise funds for their microwave, digital only, strictly open source crowd funded, vegan, social justice aware cubesat launch to Proxima Centauri. Of course this launch will only come after 10 years of ground station development, but fueled with enough hopes, dreams and promises it will become a reality!
For the rest of us who actually want to keep amateur radio in (real)
space
and are disgusted at the violations of privacy that occured by 3rd
parties
working to get Director Thompson and Director Stoddard elected, well, you should know what to do.
-Dave, KG5CCI
On Mon, Jul 13, 2020 at 9:24 AM Michelle Thompson < [email protected]> wrote:
No database went anywhere except to candidates. This is allowed in the bylaws.
Then, an automated bulk mail printing server was used. I recommended
the
company to Brennan Price for this year's mailing. Good service, inexpensive.
Return addresses don't magically transfer information.
-Michelle W5NYV
On Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 04:32 David Swanson [email protected]
wrote:
Spin Spin Spin. The simple truth here is Director Thompson took the
AMSAT
member database, and handed it over to a 3rd party competing entity
for
the
purpose of solicitation. I know I did not give ORI my home address,
yet
ORI
sent me a letter. This was a violation of my privacy, and for AMSAT members living in the EU, this was a violation of the law. Any attempt
to
explain this away is just more lies and deceit from Director Thompson
about
the shady practices they have engaged in over the past few years. As I
keep
saying, this isn't a one time thing, this is a pattern of reprehensible behavior that is unbecoming of an elected position and
this
community. Director Thompson and Director Stoddard should resign.
-Dave, KG5CCI
On Mon, Jul 13, 2020 at 5:33 AM Michelle Thompson via AMSAT-BB < [email protected]> wrote:
Yes, I can.
That part of Clayton's letter is wrong and has been repeatedly
clarified
before. Including at the 2019 annual board meeting, where Tom Clark
asked
me about it, as part of the record.
Clayton Coleman was secretary in 2019.
He ran the election.
He decided that candidate statements were limited in length to 350
words,
would be subject to editorial control by AMSAT, and could not include links. These new rules were given to us right before the 4th of July holiday with a deadline of the 7th.
This is different than any election before, where statements went directly to the printer from the candidate, were not limited in length, and no
one
from AMSAT leadership (who might be running for reelection
themselves)
had any control over the content of their challengers' statements.
We got these rules right before ballots went out. We (four
challengers)
already had normal-sized statements on the web and they had been up
six
weeks at that point. Those were the ones we wanted to use, and link
to.
We knew that as candidates, we had the right to request the mailing
list,
and send our own statements, independent of the ballot.
I requested the address list and got the DBASE4 export.
Bruce Perens had already written a letter of support and distributed
it
widely on the web. It introduced us and included our four full bios
and
statements.
I asked Bruce if we could use his letter in the mailing. He said yes. Since he was President of Open Research Institute at the time, he wanted
the
return address to not be his private home address, but a business address. That was ORI's address. He was the author of the endorsement, so I
used
his preferred return address.
I converted the DBASE4 to a more useful format, fixed the 50 or so undeliverable addresses, and found an inexpensive printer. Then I
sent
the letter from Bruce to the printer, with the bios and statements.
That turned out to be a good thing. Bios and statements were not
included
with the ballots mailed out, at all.
If we had not sent the letter, then name recognition would be the
primary
factor. We were running against well-known people.
We complained about this. It was unusual departure from the past and seemed set up to let leadership benefit from being incumbents.
The original proposal from Clayton was for an electronic only ballot. Patrick said that the bylaws were a bit clunky here and it did need
to
be
mailed out on paper. Paper was required.
This is a big reason why I made a motion at our one board meeting,
in
March, for a bylaws committee.
This bylaw isn't hard to fix. There's lots of examples out there of organizations doing electronic voting with working published bylaws.
Bruce made it very clear, when the incumbents stirred up the pot
about
the return address, that it was an endorsement from him, this was
commonly
done in political campaigns, and it would be grossly improper for me to
use
AMSATs return address because that would make it look like Bruce was speaking for or was from AMSAT. That was not going to happen. *That* would be improper.
No one candidate wanted their personal address used as a return
address.
We were mailing this as a slate and splitting the cost. We didn't have
time
or funds to make an organization or rent a box for one letter on short notice. The printer required a real return address.
No one had the address list except the candidates. Namely me because
I
contracted the printer and handled the DBASE4 address conversion.
That
is a neat story in and of itself,, for another time.
Bruce only sent the text to me and chipped in some money for postage.
The printing was automated in Van Nuys, CA.
All of this is known to Clayton Coleman and his friends on the board
that
signed the statement from this week. It has been explained by Bruce publicly, and by me several times on social media. Tom Clark brought
it
up at the 2019 annual board meeting because of the return address pot-stirring. I explained it there too. Like I said, it's on the
record.
I think insinuating the addresses were mishandled is a deliberate twisting of honest efforts to scramble to get uncensored candidate statements
out
to voters on short notice. We just didn't have a lot of time, and Bruce
was
very generous in writing a cover letter.
Again, candidates are allowed the use of the mailing lists for
election
purposes.
So, no, there was no breach. Clayton knows all this.
Saying it the way he did is a cheap shot at me, Patrick, Bruce
Perens,
and ORI.
-Michelle W5NYV
On Sun, Jul 12, 2020, 19:11 Kevin via AMSAT-BB [email protected] wrote:
Hello All,
In a previous email to the BB I posted the link to the letter we
all
received as members.
https://www.amsat.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/20200710_AMSAT_Le...
I was re-reading it and something caught my eye that I had missed
before.
"AMSAT did not provide a copy of its membership mailing addresses
to
Open Research Institute."
Just how was our mailing list compromised? This seems like aserious
breech of security, was this a hack? was any other information
lost?
was it ever found out how it happened? is our mailing list as they
say
"out in the wind"?
Michelle could you possibly check from the ORI side and backtrack
how
ORI came into possession of the AMSAT mailing list, was it
something
that was procured online?
AMSAT needs to follow up on this privacy issue and report back what
it
found and any steps that were taken to prevent this from happening
in
the future.
I look forward to an answer
73 Kevin WA7FWF #19623
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participants (8)
-
Bruce Perens -
David Swanson -
Hans BX2ABT -
Jean Marc Momple -
Kevin -
Michelle Thompson -
Stefan Wagener -
Tucker McGuire