David Friedman and assassination politics

So I just walked home from a party in Dupont Circle where some folks were
telling me about a talk David Friedman gave at the Cato Institute about a
week ago. (Apart from being Milt's son, David appears to be a
well-respected libertarian thinker in his own right.) I didn't have the
chance to go myself... 

Friedman, as I understand it, described how digital cash and anonymous
remailers combine to form assassination markets. An assassin can establish
a persistent anonymous identity through public key cryptography and take
bids on future contracts.

These ideas is of course not new to cypherpunks. We've been talking about
them for years. But these ideas are slowly infiltrating the DC body
politic. Assassination politics, here we come -- right, Jim? Want to give
a speech at Cato? Perhaps we can talk some IRS officials into coming...

-Declan

Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> writes:

> So I just walked home from a party in Dupont Circle where some folks were
> telling me about a talk David Friedman gave at the Cato Institute about a
> week ago. (Apart from being Milt's son, David appears to be a
> well-respected libertarian thinker in his own right.) I didn't have the
> chance to go myself...
>
> Friedman, as I understand it, described how digital cash and anonymous
> remailers combine to form assassination markets. An assassin can establish
> a persistent anonymous identity through public key cryptography and take
> bids on future contracts.
>
> These ideas is of course not new to cypherpunks. We've been talking about
> them for years. But these ideas are slowly infiltrating the DC body
> politic. Assassination politics, here we come -- right, Jim? Want to give
> a speech at Cato? Perhaps we can talk some IRS officials into coming...

If they have the balls to let him talk.

I convinced Jim to submit a paper to the InfoWarCon last September, but
NSCA didn't have the balls to let him speak.  They did put him paper on
their web server, tho.

Dimitri "sick and tired of this virus" Vulis

---

Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM
Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps

David wrote "The Machinery of Freedom" about tools that could be
developed to acheive "socially desirable" effects, such as the lack of
a single dominant protective agency, without the interference of the
state.  He also wrote about how, once developed, these structures
would self perpetuate, since there would be few reason to redevelop a
state.

Good stuff.  Well worth reading.

Adam


Declan McCullagh wrote:
| So I just walked home from a party in Dupont Circle where some folks were
| telling me about a talk David Friedman gave at the Cato Institute about a
| week ago. (Apart from being Milt's son, David appears to be a
| well-respected libertarian thinker in his own right.) I didn't have the
| chance to go myself... 


-- 
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
					               -Hume