HIT MEN

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                         SANDY SANDFORT
 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

C'punks,

I'm stymied.  I keep arguing the real world, and everyone
responds as though this were a MUD game.  David Merriman wrote:

    If the escrow agent has a reputation for reliability,
    honesty, integrity, etc, then the nature of the
    transaction is irrelevant....

I'm sorry, but this is patently ludicrous.  This is not a MUD or
MOO.  We're not talking about game theory and the "iterated
prisoner's dilemma."  This is about the real world.  I could cite
hundreds of examples where folks don't think "the nature of the
transaction is irrelevant."  Tree huggers won't buy from
McDonalds, irrespective of quality, because Mickey D's "encourage
the destruction of the rain forests."  Gun nuts won't do business
with Taco Bell because it's owned by Pepsico, and they've
supported gun control.  There are "green" shoppers and "investors
of conscience."  Hell, Duncan won't even buy the fine chickens
produced by Foster farms because Foster is in bed with the
Klintones (well not literally... well maybe).

The burden of proof is on those who would tell us that human
nature will change over-night when crypto-anarchy comes on line.
People *do* care about the morality of those with whom they do
business.  I see no reason to believe that will change.
Anonymous murder for hire, is not easy.  It isn't going to be any
more a threat under crypto-anarchy than it is now.  Please, let's
get out of this Tabloid, the-sky-will-fall mind set.  It's going
to be okay.


 S a n d y

Who is signing off this thread.  What's coming is coming, no
matter what we do or say.  History will have the last word.

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Sandy Sandfort writes:

> I'm stymied.  I keep arguing the real world, and everyone
> responds as though this were a MUD game.

> Who is signing off this thread.  What's coming is coming, no
> matter what we do or say.  History will have the last word.

I'm sorry that you're signing off this thread, particularly since
it was you that challenged others to "disprove" your scenarios.

After considerable struggle, I have finally succeeded in coming up with
a mechanism through which the hiring party and the murderer-for-hire
can make a contract through the escrow service in such a way that the
escrow service doesn't know that the contract is for murder.  Of course,
it requires some additional assumptions -- none of them outrageous IMO.
Since you have lost patience with the thread, I won't bother to post
the details.

This much I will say: I believe that *IF* there is a way to prove to
the satisfaction of an unbiased third party that the intended victim is
in fact dead [I'm not at all sure of this -- and this is where my
additional assumptions come in], *THEN* the contract can be structured
in such a way that the knowledge of the contract details are hidden
from the escrow service who's overseeing the performance of the contract.
So, in your scenario ONE, the escrow service would not know the contract
is a hit, and therefore would not cheat.  And, it would be completely
vulnerable to the accusation if it did so.

You say you are arguing the real world.  Yet you are proposing or 
discussing scenarios which are clearly not possible today.  So in some
sense, you are asking the rest of us to assume some set of future
conditions which are predicted to hold -- without any assurance that
they will.  I did in fact view this as a game which is why I felt free
to invent other pieces of infrastructure which didn't seem outrageously
improbable.

You and Tim (and others) have argued over whether or to what extent an
ordinary escrow service will tolerate contracts for illegal and immoral
services.  My own opinion is closer to yours, but if, as I believe, the
knowledge of the contract details can be kept from the escrow service,
this all becomes academic anyway.  As you say, history will judge.

To me, it seems that the hard problem here is how (or whether) a real
world event, such as the death of an individual, could ever be "proved"
to an impartial observer via the net.  As you pointed out, digitized
images alone will not fill the bill, which is why I invented the 
on-line coroner's service.

Anyway, it was fun.


-- Jeff

I'm sorry, but this is patently ludicrous.  This is not a MUD or
   MOO.  We're not talking about game theory and the "iterated
   prisoner's dilemma."  This is about the real world.  

Game theory _does_ make a distinction between activities that make
victims and those that don't.

Gambling is victimless.  All parties consent to the transaction.  The
end result is a rearrangement of economic power.  There is a small
indirect loss to the extent that the two bettors make effort
conducting this transaction, but this effort is not freely usable
by other parties.

Murder has victims.  The dead did not consent to their death.  There
is a direct economic loss in the now unavailable abilities of the dead
and indirect economic loss in the process of disposing the dead's
affairs.

It is not, however, the direct parties to the "transaction" where the
game theory applies, but rather in the relation of other parties.

If I know that two people are betting with each other, that doesn't
affect me, because their activity is completely consensual.  If I
don't want to gamble, I don't have to.  I can't deny my gambling debts
if I've never used an opportunity to get any.

On the other hand, everyone has enemies and everyone has different
enemies at different times.  Each person has some risk of being
murdered, be it large or small.  The relationship between a murderer,
their agent, and the victim is _not_ separable from my own interest,
because I stand some non-negligible possibility of being the victim in
the future.

Therefore it is in my own best interest to take action against a
structure of murder for hire if the cost of that action is less than
the marginal cost of my risk against murder.  In other words, the
cheaper murder for hire is, the more people there will be who will be
interested in making sure it doesn't exist.

Risk is a subjective entity.  The less able one feels able to identify
and analyze potentially harmful events, the higher the risk is.  A
major change in situation, for example, the existence of a truly
anonymous murder market, greatly increases risk, because nobody has
experience in how such might behave.  Do not be surprised if many,
many people take it upon themselves to quash the building blocks for a
murder market.

Ironically, if it seen that the limiting factor in deployment of these
markets is the creative thought of the designers, it will be in the
best interest of many people to use these incipient markets to prevent
their further growth.

Eric

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     (I just want to see how long a thread with the subject "End of ...
thread" can keep going.)

Jeff Barber writes:
 > After considerable struggle, I have finally succeeded in coming up with
 > a mechanism through which the hiring party and the murderer-for-hire
 > can make a contract through the escrow service in such a way that the
 > escrow service doesn't know that the contract is for murder.

     I'm interested in your solution.  Mine is to set up the escrow
payment seperately from the verification.  The escrow agent would
release the funds when instructed to do so by a specified verification
agent.  This eliminates the risk of the escrow agent keeping the money
without losing reputation.

     Now, the verification agent knows that it is certifying that a
murder took place and could collude with the escrow agent to split the
money, or with the victim's insurer to get a reward, etc.  This agent
would have to be paid by both the contractor and contractee,
regardless of outcome, to remove incentive to collude with the person
paying the fee.

     Therefore, the profit from collusion must be less than the cost
of the loss of reputation.  If one makes the assumption that such
agencies will not care about reputation, such arrangements are
impossible.  I question this assumption.

     Also, escrow agents will not deal with known hit verifiers, so
the entity that runs such a service must also run a legitimate
verification service or have a method for funneling verifications
through a legitimate service.

 > This much I will say: I believe that *IF* there is a way to prove to
 > the satisfaction of an unbiased third party that the intended victim is
 > in fact dead [I'm not at all sure of this -- and this is where my
 > additional assumptions come in], *THEN* the contract can be structured
 > in such a way that the knowledge of the contract details are hidden
 > from the escrow service who's overseeing the performance of the contract.

     I agree (please punch holes in my proposed scenario).  I don't
know how to provide such a proof.  The hit verification agent will
have to attend a lot of autopsies and funerals.

Regards,

Patrick May
pjm@gasco.com

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Patrick J. May writes:

>      (I just want to see how long a thread with the subject "End of ...
> thread" can keep going.)

I admit, not a very good title with which to continue the thread.


> Jeff Barber writes:
>  > After considerable struggle, I have finally succeeded in coming up with
>  > a mechanism through which the hiring party and the murderer-for-hire
>  > can make a contract through the escrow service in such a way that the
>  > escrow service doesn't know that the contract is for murder.
> 
>      I'm interested in your solution.  Mine is to set up the escrow
> payment seperately from the verification.  The escrow agent would
> release the funds when instructed to do so by a specified verification
> agent.  This eliminates the risk of the escrow agent keeping the money
> without losing reputation.

I simply took it one step farther and did away with the need for
verification of a "hit" (of course it's replaced by a step which 
verifies the "death" but does not require that it appear to be a hit).
I did this by assuming into existence an on-line coroner's "clearinghouse"
to which ALL the coroners belong and to which all death certificates
are filed.  This way, no one other than the killer and the hiring party
need ever know that a hit has taken place.

If the clearinghouse provides an automated e-mail server (or functional
equivalent) which will answer the question "Is <named individual>
dead?" with a response message in a standard format and encrypted
with a key provided in the request, then the killer and the employer
can cooperate in the creation of a request packet and an "expected
response" packet.  In my scheme, another trusted agent is required
during the setup phase -- his only function is to ensure that the
employer doesn't cheat in the preparation of these packets.

Then, the employer simply gives the encrypted expected response packet
to the escrow service with instructions to pay the killer when he
can produce a copy of the packet.  The killer will only be able
to obtain this when the coroner's clearinghouse responds to a query
with the "victim is dead" response encrypted in the key prepared by
the employer.  This key is known only by the employer but was also used
in the preparation of the expected response packet.

So, the steps are:

1	Employer creates a key P (which he does *NOT* disclose to Killer).

2	The two now cooperate in a set of transactions with Trent using
	P and C (where C is the public key of the clearinghouse).

3	First, Killer provides plaintext of the request, plaintext of
	the expected response and the public key of the clearinghouse
	to Trent.

4	Then, Employer provides P, the plaintext of the expected response
	and the public key of the clearinghouse to Trent.

5	Trent verifies that both copies of the plaintext of the expected
	response and both copies of the public key are the same (so that
	neither of the parties can cheat the other).

6	Now, Trent takes the plaintext of the request, appends P and
	encrypts the results with the public key of the clearinghouse.
	This he gives to Killer (doesn't matter if Employer sees it too).

7	And, Trent takes the plaintext of the expected response, encrypts
	it with P and gives the result to Employer (only).  (He also 
	gives a hash of it to Killer so that Killer can verify that
	Employer gives the same packet to the escrow service below.)

8	Employer gives the encrypted expected-results packet (along with
	the money, etc.) to the Escrow service with the instructions
	that Killer can have the money when he produces an exact copy of
	the packet.

9	After verifying that the escrow service has the money, and
	that the hash of the packet held by the escrow service matches
	what Trent gave him, Killer whacks the victim.

10	Within a few days, the victim's death is is duly filed in the
	clearinghouse.  Now, Killer can send the encrypted request packet
	produced by Trent to the clearinghouse.

11	The clearinghouse uses its private key to decrypt the request
	producing the plaintext request along with a key (P) in which to
	encrypt the response.

12	Since the victim really is dead, the clearinghouse produces a
	plaintext equivalent to the original expected-response plaintext,
	then encrypts it with P, producing the magic cookie Killer needs
	to get his money.
	
13	The clearinghouse returns the results to Killer who forwards a
	copy to the escrow service along with his demand for the money.

14	The escrow service pays off -- end of contract.


Probably, this could be modified so that Trent doesn't need to see
the plaintext request and response, but I'd have to get out Schneier
and spend all night thinking about that.  Also, it doesn't seem that
important since the request and response are small snippets of text
that Trent operates on a hundred thousand times every day.  Furthermore,
all Trent can do is refuse to perform the transaction -- neither of
the parties to the contract will be out a dime if he won't.

>      I agree (please punch holes in my proposed scenario).  I don't
> know how to provide such a proof.  The hit verification agent will
> have to attend a lot of autopsies and funerals.

Avoiding this is the primary reason I have the coroner's association.
In essence, all that is needed is a trusted source of information about
the real world.  It could just be an ordinary general purpose information
retrieval service, except that it has to know about deaths of particular
individuals and I don't see any route other than the on-line coroner
for the information to make it into "cyberspace".

OK, now that that's done with...

Unless goaded into another response, I too will shut up about this thread.


-- Jeff