You're a pirate party championing internet freedom. Why are you blocking the best tool available for private/safe communication?

Don't you think it would set a good example if you were to not enforce localisation of people who connect to speak to you guys? This TOR blocking was set up specifically by your admin/s and in my opinion sets a terrible example and you should feel really bad.

For shame!

Unfortunately we don't run the IRC server, we use an IRC network shared by a number of other pirate parties. I'll try and find out if the block on TOR can be removed but if they say no, there's not much we can do about it.

nice dude thanks
something tells me the other pirate affiliates would want to have tor access too. or they should want. *shifty eyes*

Well, I can confirm that it's possible to register, sign in and post here entirely using TOR and a throw-away email account. This post is proof.

i was moaning & complaining about IRC not the forums forums are fine aye.

Point being there are ways that you can communicate with the pirate party anonymously if you wish. You can access the forums and wiki using Tor. You can send email anonymously, and encrypt it with our private key if you don't trust google.

The IRC is run by a collection of pirate parties around the world who all take privacy quite seriously, but also don't want to see the network flooded or DDoSed, and still need to comply with local laws. Your IP address is masked by the IRC server automatically (even if you're not registered) and as long as you're not doing anything criminally illegal I'm sure the IRC operators on pirate.net would all make a large fuss about being asked to hand over any details. And you may also be able to access the IRC using a paid VPN such as itshidden or faceless, because as near as I can tell only the easily abused free services such as Tor and open proxies are being blocked.

I think this is a reasonable tradeoff.