THOSE DARNED HIT MEN

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                         SANDY SANDFORT
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C'punks,

Tim May writes with regard to anonymous contract killers:

    ... And the risk of losing the digital cash can be made
    vanishingly small by use of anonymous escrow services,
    which act solely as holders of the digital cash....

I don't buy it.  Anonymous digital assassins, murder escrows and
all that work fine in an artificial, abstract, game-theory world.
I doubt we'll see much--if any--of it in the Real World.  Why?
Because the market is too richly textured not to come up with its
own cultural, ethical and digital fixes.

Would you do business with a escrow that was the bag man for
contract murders?  I wouldn't, you wouldn't and the vast majority
of people in the world wouldn't.  That wouldn't stop some escrows
from performing that service, but it would run up the cost.  When
the costs rise high enough, profitable opportunities are created
for false escrows to enter the business.  That's just one problem
that can interfere with such an odious endeavor; there are more.

I think the best way to illustrate that the anonymous murder
business is nothing more than a bugaboo, is to set the best minds
on the planet--Cypherpunks--to work on the problem.  Let's all
put our thinking caps on, and come up with answers to the follow
hypothetical situation:

Let us assume a world with totally anonymous communications and
payments (strong crypto, remailers, digital cash, etc.).

1)  How would YOU scam money from the system without actually
    knocking anyone off?  Or in the alternative,

2)  How would YOU use technology to address the problem from
    police/private investigator perspective?

I'm betting that with no more than a few moments of thought,
Cypherpunks will come up with a ton of hacks.  To get the ball
rolling, here are two from me:

SCENARIO ONE

I set up a meat-and-potatoes escrow business.  I keep my nose
clean.  I honor my obligations.  I build up a good reputation.
At some point, I'll be approached by a murderer and the person
who is hiring him or her.  I'll accept the payment.  When the
murder is committed, I won't pay off.  The murderer will (a) sue
me (I don't think so), (b) damage my reputation (I'll leave this
one as an exercise for the student), or (c) murder *me* (ah, but
first he has to find me; in the world we posit, that won't be
very easy).  If this scenario happens very often, it'll take all
the profit out of the murder business.  Of course, the murderer
can get the money face-to-face from the customer, but then we're
back to today's square one.

SCENARIO TWO

I set up a phoney murder-for-hire business.  Someone contracts
with me to bump-off their rich uncle.  The client deposits my
payment with a reputable escrow company, "Murder Escrows R Us." I
go to the uncle and tell him the whole deal.  Using digital
technology, bribed coroners, etc., we fake his death.  When the
news hits the Net, the escrow pays me off.  The uncle comes back
to life, disinherits whomever he suspects wanted him dead.  And I
laugh all the way to the digital bank.  I create a new pseudonym,
place another murder-for-hire ad, and do it all again.  Given our
Brave New World, nobody can touch me.

Okay C'punks, it's your turn.  How would you subvert Tim May's
vision of anonymous murder-for-hire for fun and profit?  (Feel
free to take potshots at my two scenarios as well.  Cypherpunk
cleverness cuts both ways, I'm sure.)


 S a n d y

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Tim May writes with regard to anonymous contract killers:
> > 
> >   ... And the risk of losing the digital cash can be made
> >   vanishingly small by use of anonymous escrow services,
> >   which act solely as holders of the digital cash....

Sandy Sandfort writes
> I don't buy it.  Anonymous digital assassins, murder escrows and
> all that work fine in an artificial, abstract, game-theory world.
> I doubt we'll see much--if any--of it in the Real World.  Why?
> Because the market is too richly textured not to come up with its
> own cultural, ethical and digital fixes.

This true conclusion is based on a true assumption that Sandy does
not explicitly make, indeed implicitly denies.

That there is a strong correlation between one wrongful behavior - murder
for hire, and other wrongful behavior - dishonoring promises.

Murder for hire will work if there are honorable, well respected
murder for hire escrow agencies with a long and well established
reputation and murder for hire hitmen with a long and well
established reputation.

Neither seems likely, especially the second.

Good points, Sandy.  However... (student dunce cap stapled firmly to
my head [ouch])


First of all, it's not clear to me that it is impossible to structure
the deal so that your escrow service even knows that it is a murder
contract.  It might be possible to construct it as "I authorize you to
pay the other party if they can produce a certificate that, when
decrypted with this key, produces this text."  The production of that
certificate might only be accomplished through the cooperation of the
on-line coroner -- see scenario two below.


> SCENARIO ONE
> 
> I set up a meat-and-potatoes escrow business.  I keep my nose
> clean.  I honor my obligations.  I build up a good reputation.
> At some point, I'll be approached by a murderer and the person
> who is hiring him or her.  I'll accept the payment.  When the
> murder is committed, I won't pay off.  The murderer will (a) sue
> me (I don't think so), (b) damage my reputation (I'll leave this
> one as an exercise for the student), or (c) murder *me* 

Why can't I damage your reputation?  Assuming:

a)	there exists a public place to cast aspersions on your business

b)	that I have a receipt digitally signed by you indicating that
	you accepted the payment and contract from the two parties

c)	that I can prove I have "executed" my end of the bargain
	(pun intended)

How will you defend yourself?  I'll simply challenge you to produce
the receipt (signed by me) proving that I received the payment from
you, which - obviously - you won't be able to do.  Your only recourse
is to ignore me and hope that no one else listens to me (might work
once but ...).  I don't see why the subject of the contract would
ever come up.

(And surely, you wouldn't try to argue that you didn't pay me simply
because the contract was for murder -- I don't think your potential
future clients would relish giving their escrow service the power to
judge the moral virtue of their contracts.)


> SCENARIO TWO
> 
> I set up a phoney murder-for-hire business.  Someone contracts
> with me to bump-off their rich uncle.  The client deposits my
> payment with a reputable escrow company, "Murder Escrows R Us." I
> go to the uncle and tell him the whole deal.  Using digital
> technology, bribed coroners, etc., we fake his death.  When the
> news hits the Net, the escrow pays me off.  The uncle comes back
> to life, disinherits whomever he suspects wanted him dead.  And I
> laugh all the way to the digital bank.  I create a new pseudonym,
> place another murder-for-hire ad, and do it all again.  Given our
> Brave New World, nobody can touch me.

Here's the real problem:
How can I (as the hypothetical murderer) prove to the satisfaction of
the hiring party and the escrow service that I have fulfilled my part
of the contract?

It seems that, in order for this scheme to work, the coroner must be
in the business of regularly publishing signed and certified death
certificates on the net.  Otherwise, a premise of the whole scenario
(that there is a way for me [the killer] to prove that I have done
the deed) is not fulfilled and we would never have made our "anonymous"
contract in the first place.

So, the coroner (the death-certifying agent) is in a position of
considerable trust.  And after all, "Murder Escrows R Us" is not the
only company making use of the coroner's death certificates; Net Life
Assurance Corporation ("Get Net, it pays" :-) will also base its
(potentially quite-large) payoffs on the certificates issued by the
coroner.  I'm assuming therefore that the life insurance companies and
the like will exert sufficiently strong influence to ensure that your
scenario is extremely unlikely.  Perhaps the CyberNation Association
of Life Insurance Companies has promised to hunt down and shoot like
a dog any coroner they find out has faked a death certificate.  Or,
perhaps you must put up a very large bond before you become established
as a coroner who is trusted to issue net-death certificates.

In either case, the problem boils down to this:
Everyone has their price; can I, as the hired killer, afford the coroner's
price?  I'm betting that the coroner's price is pretty damn high.

[The murder victim could presumably help with the bribe payment too, but
once you've told him about the murder plan, he can take steps to protect
himself from you and there will be little motivation for him to help.]


(Now how do I get this thing off my head ...)


-- Jeff