Hi all,
Matthias Kirschner sent an email recently using the word Fraud.
If any of you downloaded the mailing list data that FSFE made available,
what you have done is much like browsing a list of your friend's friends
on social media. Millions of people do that every day.
Europe's stringent new privacy regulation, the GDPR, is for enterprises.
FSFE e.V. is regulated under GDPR. You and I, as volunteers, are
private individuals and we are not subject to that regulation.
We can talk to each other.
In a free country, citizens communicating with each other are not
committing any crime.
Please don't be afraid of Kirschner when he behaves like a toddler,
stamping his foot and throwing tantrums.
In Nazi Germany and the GDR, fear reigned and people were discouraged
from talking to each other. Kirschner's email is a blatant attempt to
maintain a similar culture of fear.
Kirschner appointed his staff and friends to be the only official
members of FSFE e.V. so he never has to face a real vote. Is a leader
who is appointing his employees to vote for him a real leader, or simply
a coward?
In the middle ages, feudal lords, like Kirschner, didn't put themself up
for election either. They wanted to be president for life, like the
despotic dictators of impoverished countries. Every now and then, the
feudal lord would burn a witch or lock somebody in the stocks to keep
the community afraid. Can you see echoes of this in the way Kirschner
has treated a volunteer, your fellowship representative, for talking
about censorship?
Kirschner has spent more than a year spreading defamation behind my
back. That is how he sought to undermine your decision to vote for me.
Now we have seen it in his public email. Some people asked me why I
kept this going: I didn't, I resigned in September 2018. Kirschner has
kept it going in numerous ways.
For many years, the FSFE web site invited you to Join. But you were
never recorded as members. You never received invitations to the annual
meeting. Was the "Join" button a Fraud organized by Kirschner?
FSFE told you that you could vote for a representative. The President,
Matthias Kirschner, insisted on exercising control over communications
from the representative to the community, even secretly applying a
communications policy[1] to the representative. Is that real
representation? Or was that potentially an example of Kirschner's FSFE
making a Fraud?
FSFE e.V. has been registered as a charitable organization for tax
purposes. However, FSFE's focus has changed dramatically from pursuing
what is best for society to getting what is best for the corporate
donors like Google. It is perfectly OK for businesses to set up lobby
groups: but it isn't OK for them to masquerade as charities and profit
from taxpayers and the work of unpaid volunteers. Herr Kirschner,
could the charitable registration be a Fraud?
Kirschner claims that FSFE is transparent and makes reference to
Transparency International. Yet the published[2] accounts are the most
opaque set of accounts I've ever seen. Even Swiss banks reveal more.
Could the Transparency claim be a Fraud?
Matthias Kirschner wrote a long email last week making many references
to legal counsel and law enforcement. There has been no communication
whatsoever from both legal counsel and law enforcement. Not one
lawyer's letter, not one inquiry from police. No SWAT teams and no
Panzer tanks crawling up the street.
Authorized downloads of the mailing list are simply not a crime.
Kirschner's email looks like the behaviour of somebody who is not a
police officer putting on a police uniform and pretending to be a
policeman. Matthias Kirschner, is your email itself the biggest Fraud?
Regards,
Daniel
1. https://fsfellowship.eu/assets/fsfe-communications-policy.pdf
2. https://fsfe.org/about/funds/2017.en.html
--
Former FSFE Fellowship Representative
Debian Developer
https://danielpocock.com