Re: FCPUNX:McVeigh

At 12:42 PM 6/4/97 -0400, Hallam-Baker wrote:
> Bell's Murder Politics scheme was a censorship scheme.

Surely people would be more inclined to kill politicians 
for what they do, rather than what they say.
 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
              				|  
We have the right to defend ourselves	|   http://www.jim.com/jamesd/
and our property, because of the kind	|  
of animals that we are. True law	|   James A. Donald
derives from this right, not from the	|  
arbitrary power of the state.		|   jamesd@echeque.com

Actually, Bell's plan was simply the ultimate adolescent revenge fantasy. 
Government thugs got your goat (or your computers, your car, your guns?)
Wipe them out. Supermarket clerk taking too long? Rub her out. Minivan cut
you off on the way to work? Kill them off. 

When I pointed out to Bell that his plan if implemented would allow you to
knock off not just government thugs but annoying neighbors, his response
was that assassins might opt only to eradicate the Feds -- hardly a
reassuring thought.

-Declan


On Sat, 7 Jun 1997 jamesd@echeque.com wrote:

> At 12:42 PM 6/4/97 -0400, Hallam-Baker wrote:
> > Bell's Murder Politics scheme was a censorship scheme.
> 
> Surely people would be more inclined to kill politicians 
> for what they do, rather than what they say.
>  ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>               				|  
> We have the right to defend ourselves	|   http://www.jim.com/jamesd/
> and our property, because of the kind	|  
> of animals that we are. True law	|   James A. Donald
> derives from this right, not from the	|  
> arbitrary power of the state.		|   jamesd@echeque.com
> 
>

On Mon, 9 Jun 1997, Declan McCullagh wrote:

> 
> Actually, Bell's plan was simply the ultimate adolescent revenge fantasy. 
> Government thugs got your goat (or your computers, your car, your guns?)
> Wipe them out. Supermarket clerk taking too long? Rub her out. Minivan cut
> you off on the way to work? Kill them off. 

This is the best description of AP so far.  Jim had about as much chance
of implementing it as most adolescent fantasies.  (At least he was not
posting about porn fantasies involving the Brady Bunch meets Gilligan's
Island or somesuch...)

The general consensus of those who met him at the first Portland physical
meeting was that he was pretty far into fantasy.  (There is a certain
childish glee that tends to accompany such thoughts.  He had that glee
when talking about AP and the carbon fiber threat. (Although he did not
give actual methods on the carbon thread one.  Just vague comments about
"something wonderful".))

> When I pointed out to Bell that his plan if implemented would allow you to
> knock off not just government thugs but annoying neighbors, his response
> was that assassins might opt only to eradicate the Feds -- hardly a
> reassuring thought.

You were not the only one to point that out to him.  He was so attached to
his little plan that he was totally unwilling to see any flaw in it.  I
pointed out that people with the amount of cash and scruples of Bill
Gatesw would use it to wipe out compeating companies staff and/or
management.  (Though, if they were smart, they would just take out the
lead engineer on the most threatening projects.)

The big problem I had with AP, other than implementation and concept, was
that he was unwilling to do his own dirty work.  He reminded me of people
who eat meat, but could not concieve of killing Bambi.  You don't go into
a scheme like that and still think that you won't get blood on your
hands.

alano@teleport.com | "Those who are without history are doomed to retype it."

At 09:36 -0700 6/9/97, Alan wrote:
>On Mon, 9 Jun 1997, Declan McCullagh wrote:
>
>>
>> Actually, Bell's plan was simply the ultimate adolescent revenge fantasy.
>> Government thugs got your goat (or your computers, your car, your guns?)
>> Wipe them out. Supermarket clerk taking too long? Rub her out. Minivan cut
>> you off on the way to work? Kill them off.
>
>This is the best description of AP so far.  Jim had about as much chance
>of implementing it as most adolescent fantasies.  (At least he was not
>posting about porn fantasies involving the Brady Bunch meets Gilligan's
>Island or somesuch...)

This is a draft of what I wrote in my Internet Underground article:

	If nothing else, Bell's plan was inventive: few
	people like the IRS, but even fewer have ever
	concocted a way to eliminate it. In fact, Bell
	had devised the ultimate revenge fantasy. Upset
	at demanding creditors, former lovers, or
	jackbooted thugs? The 38-year old computer
	engineer described how you could find someone
	willing to kill them -- for the right price.
	It was sexy, too. Bell's plan relied on the
	Internet, anonymous remailers, untraceable
	digital cash, and unbreakable public-key
	encryption. He even gave it a catchy name:
	Assassination Politics.

[...]

	Bell was most interested in talking up
	Assassination Politics and predicting how it
	would eventually blossom. He had just published
	an op-ed in a local newspaper saying "the whole
	corrupt system" could be stopped. "Whatever
	my idea is, it's not silly. There are a lot
	of adjectives you can use, but not silly," he
	told me. "I feel that the mere fact of having
	such a debate will cause people to realize that
	they no longer have to tolerate the governments
	they previously had to tolerate. At that point
	I think politicians will slink away like they
	did in eastern Europe in 1989. They'll have
	lost the war."

	He told me why he became convinced that the
	government needed to be lopped off at the
	knees. Bell's epiphany came after he ordered
	a chemical from a supply firm and was arrested
	when he failed to follow EPA regulations. "That
	radicalized me," he said. "That pissed me off.
	I figured I'd get back at them by taking down
	their entire system. That's how I'd do it."'

	Moral issues aside, one of the problems plaguing
	Bell's scheme is that it's not limited to
	eliminating "government thugs who violate your
	rights," as he likes to describe it. If it
	existed, anyone with some spare change could
	wipe out a nosy neighbor or even an irritating
	grocery store clerk. After I pointed this out
	to Bell on the phone, he fired email back a few
	days later saying, "Assuming a functioning
	Assassination Politics system, nothing stops
	you from contributing to my death." He
	suggested that maybe assassins would develop
	scruples: "You'd be able to purchase deaths
	of unworthy people, but it might be only at a
	dramatically higher price. Doable but not
	particularly economical."

-Declan


-------------------------
Declan McCullagh
Time Inc.
The Netly News Network
Washington Correspondent
http://netlynews.com/

Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> wrote:

        Moral issues aside, one of the problems plaguing
        Bell's scheme is that it's not limited to
        eliminating "government thugs who violate your
        rights," as he likes to describe it. If it
        existed, anyone with some spare change could
        wipe out a nosy neighbor or even an irritating
        grocery store clerk.

Not likely, but for another reason.  Assuming you had the money to take
out your neighbor, it's going to be fairly obvious who did it.  (How many
neighbors do you have?  Pretty short list of suspects.)

Also, killing some nobody in a grocery store is more prone to error, and
less widely witnessed, and therefore harder to collect payment on, thus
less profitable.

The possibility of Microsoft killing their competition's engineers is
somewhat more realistic, although lately they've been hiring a lot of
them instead, so maybe they don't want to kill them. :)

On Tue, 10 Jun 1997, Anonymous wrote:

> The possibility of Microsoft killing their competition's engineers is
> somewhat more realistic, although lately they've been hiring a lot of
> them instead, so maybe they don't want to kill them. :)

"Ve have veys ov making you vork for us!"

Adds a new twist to hiring practices...  Work for us or not at all.

"Microsoft Mach Frie!"

alano@teleport.com|"The only secure system is one run over by a steamroller."

At 9:34 AM -0700 6/10/97, Alan wrote:
>On Tue, 10 Jun 1997, Anonymous wrote:
>
>> The possibility of Microsoft killing their competition's engineers is
>> somewhat more realistic, although lately they've been hiring a lot of
>> them instead, so maybe they don't want to kill them. :)
>
>"Ve have veys ov making you vork for us!"
>
>Adds a new twist to hiring practices...  Work for us or not at all.
>
>"Microsoft Mach Frie!"

I don't think MS is using the Mach kernel...

Maybe you meant "Microsoft macht frei!"

Or "McDonald's Makes Fries!"

Or, speaking of the Mach kernel,

Kernel Jerry Sanders finger-lickin' good tasty bytes.


--Klaus! von Future Prime

There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws.
Only one response to the key grabbers is warranted: "Death to Tyrants!"
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^1398269     | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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In <199706101102.NAA05299@basement.replay.com>, on 06/10/97 
   at 01:02 PM, nobody@REPLAY.COM (Anonymous) said:

>The possibility of Microsoft killing their competition's engineers is
>somewhat more realistic, although lately they've been hiring a lot of
>them instead, so maybe they don't want to kill them. :)

Working at M$ is a fate worse than death.

- -- 
- ---------------------------------------------------------------
William H. Geiger III  http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii
Geiger Consulting    Cooking With Warp 4.0

Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice
PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail.
OS/2 PGP 2.6.3a at: http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii/pgpmr2.html                        
- ---------------------------------------------------------------

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At 4:02 AM -0700 6/10/97, Anonymous wrote:
>Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> wrote:
>
>        Moral issues aside, one of the problems plaguing
>        Bell's scheme is that it's not limited to
>        eliminating "government thugs who violate your
>        rights," as he likes to describe it. If it
>        existed, anyone with some spare change could
>        wipe out a nosy neighbor or even an irritating
>        grocery store clerk.
>
>Not likely, but for another reason.  Assuming you had the money to take
>out your neighbor, it's going to be fairly obvious who did it.  (How many
>neighbors do you have?  Pretty short list of suspects.)

Nonsense. The mechanisms for arranging the hit are untraceable. Thus, it
hardly matters who the "suspects" are, as nothing is provable. (Assuming no
implicating ephemera are left lying around on disk drives....)

By the way, this is not really Bell's "assassination politics," this is
just anonymous contract killings, known about to some of us since Chaum's
work was first published...cf. my own "Crypto Anarchist Manifesto," 1988.

I may sound touchy on this issue, but I'm seeing more and more articles
here and relayed from outside essentially giving Bell the credit for
inventing these kinds of markets, when in fact he's a relative latecomer.

--Tim May




There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws.
Only one response to the key grabbers is warranted: "Death to Tyrants!"
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^1398269     | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

At 05:39 PM 6/10/97 -0700, Wei Dai wrote:
>I think the novelty of Bell's scheme is that it allows assassination
>payments to be pooled from a large number of anonymous payers without
>explicit coordination (i.e., the payers do not have to communicate with
>each other to work out a contract, etc.).  

That's not the novel part - in addition to anonymous contract killings,
it's also easy to run an anonymous fund that _claims_ it will use any
donations of digicash encrypted to the fund's public key for assassinating
the designated target.  In both that approach, and Bell's, there's still
the reputation problem of making sure the person collecting the money
really does pay off the killer.  What's novel about Bell's version
(and I don't know whether it originate with him or not) is that
it provides a cyberspace-only mechanism for the assassin to 
demonstrate to the payer that he's the one who did the job
and isn't some wannabe claiming to have done it to collect the cash.
	(like the wannabes who called newspapers claiming to
	have been the World Trade Center bombers, etc.)
There are alternatives, like posting a photo of the corpse to
a time-stamping service and then to Usenet, though this adds
some risk to the assassination, and is less useful for
public killings (e.g. if the President gets shot,
and there's a well-known address for the assassination pool,
the White House Press Corps may try to get their photographs
into the pool before sending them to Reuters and, umm, AP.)

The assassin still has to make sure he gets paid, and Bell suggests
(incorrectly, I think) that since all the payer is doing is
running a lottery, not contracting for killings, that the payer
could be a persistent entity with some reputation capital
who has an incentive to pay off.  

>Now in light of the fact that when the target has many enemies the
>assassination becomes a non-excludable public good, it is almost certain
>that the scheme cannot actually work in practice.  All of the potential
>payers would rather free-ride and let others pay, so the public good ends
>up not being "produced".

I think Bell is imagining that a lot of people would be willing to
pay $5 for killing high-profile targets, like a few IRS agents,
so this wouldn't be a problem for the targets _he_ wants killed off.
Getting people to chip in large amounts of money is tougher.




#			Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com
# You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto/pgp
#   (If this is a mailing list or news, please Cc: me on replies.  Thanks.)

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

On Wed, 11 Jun 1997, Bill Stewart wrote:

> At 05:39 PM 6/10/97 -0700, Wei Dai wrote:
> >I think the novelty of Bell's scheme is that it allows assassination
> >payments to be pooled from a large number of anonymous payers without
> >explicit coordination (i.e., the payers do not have to communicate with
> >each other to work out a contract, etc.).  
> 
> That's not the novel part - in addition to anonymous contract killings,
> it's also easy to run an anonymous fund that _claims_ it will use any
> donations of digicash encrypted to the fund's public key for assassinating
> the designated target.  In both that approach, and Bell's, there's still
> the reputation problem of making sure the person collecting the money
> really does pay off the killer.

I don't think this is much of a problem.  As long as someone is found
dead prematurely, the people who offered money for the assassination
got their wish.  Whether or not it goes to the real killer is
irrelevant.  From the killer's point of view, the problem of whether
or not he will get his payment is easily solved:

Both parties could mutually agree to use an escrow service to take care
of releasing or retaining the money.  The service wouldn't have to be
anonymously run and would remain ignorant of the uses of its service
The payer would put up a certain amount of money either equal to,
greater than, or less than the cost of the killing depending on the
relative reputations of the payer and payee.  If the payee doesn't
claim the money after x number of days, it gets returned to the payer.
If the payee authorizes the release of the money to the payee and the
payee claims it, it goes to the payee.  And if only one authorizes the
release of the money to the payee, it remains with the escrow service.
This prevents the payer from ripping off the payee.  The only flaw is
that the payee could claim the money but the payer could not authorize
its release.  It's a great way to cheat someone out of a large amount
of money, but it doesn't do the cheater any good, because he won't be
able to benefit from it (unless the cheater happens to be the escrow
agent).

> What's novel about Bell's version
> (and I don't know whether it originate with him or not) is that
> it provides a cyberspace-only mechanism for the assassin to 
> demonstrate to the payer that he's the one who did the job
> and isn't some wannabe claiming to have done it to collect the cash.
> 	(like the wannabes who called newspapers claiming to
> 	have been the World Trade Center bombers, etc.)
> There are alternatives, like posting a photo of the corpse to
> a time-stamping service and then to Usenet, though this adds
> some risk to the assassination, and is less useful for
> public killings (e.g. if the President gets shot,
> and there's a well-known address for the assassination pool,
> the White House Press Corps may try to get their photographs
> into the pool before sending them to Reuters and, umm, AP.)

Bell's idea was basically that demonstrating foreknowledge of the
killing was adequete proof that the person demonstrating this
knowledge was the assassin.  This generalization can be used for
anonymous contract assassinations, also.  The assassin could give
vague information to the payer such as the method of killing, caliber
of bullet used, or the week that the killing is to take place.  In
fact, anonymous contracts could be viewed as the same thing as
AP, except that anonymous assassination contracts don't try to pretend
it's just about betting on someone's death.




Mark
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TCM
>Nonsense. The mechanisms for arranging the hit are untraceable. Thus, it
>hardly matters who the "suspects" are, as nothing is provable. (Assuming no
>implicating ephemera are left lying around on disk drives....)
>
>By the way, this is not really Bell's "assassination politics," this is
>just anonymous contract killings, known about to some of us since Chaum's
>work was first published...cf. my own "Crypto Anarchist Manifesto," 1988.
>
>I may sound touchy on this issue, but I'm seeing more and more articles
>here and relayed from outside essentially giving Bell the credit for
>inventing these kinds of markets, when in fact he's a relative latecomer.

why be bashful, timmy? go ahead and say it. 
"I invented the concept of anonymous contract killings via cyberspace, 
and I'm quite proud of this, and it annoys me when people don't give me 
proper credit"

On Tue, 10 Jun 1997, Tim May wrote:

> By the way, this is not really Bell's "assassination politics," this is
> just anonymous contract killings, known about to some of us since Chaum's
> work was first published...cf. my own "Crypto Anarchist Manifesto," 1988.
> 
> I may sound touchy on this issue, but I'm seeing more and more articles
> here and relayed from outside essentially giving Bell the credit for
> inventing these kinds of markets, when in fact he's a relative latecomer.

I think the novelty of Bell's scheme is that it allows assassination
payments to be pooled from a large number of anonymous payers without
explicit coordination (i.e., the payers do not have to communicate with
each other to work out a contract, etc.).  For killing a neighbor it
doesn't improve upon the simple untraceable contract, but it can make a
big difference when the target has many enemies (Bell gave politicians as
an example).

Now in light of the fact that when the target has many enemies the
assassination becomes a non-excludable public good, it is almost certain
that the scheme cannot actually work in practice.  All of the potential
payers would rather free-ride and let others pay, so the public good ends
up not being "produced".

At 9:51 AM -0700 6/11/97, Bill Stewart wrote:

>really does pay off the killer.  What's novel about Bell's version
>(and I don't know whether it originate with him or not) is that
>it provides a cyberspace-only mechanism for the assassin to
>demonstrate to the payer that he's the one who did the job
>and isn't some wannabe claiming to have done it to collect the cash.
>	(like the wannabes who called newspapers claiming to
>	have been the World Trade Center bombers, etc.)

What really creates a "hit" on the efficiency of Bell's system, as I
understand it, is that the guy who plans to make the hit may plan to do it
on, for example, June 21. This is the date he bets on heavily.

Alas, someone else does the hit on June19th, or 15th, or whatever. (There
are all those dates, distributed on some curve,  implying others are
thinking making the hit, too.)

Or, his target stays indoors all that day. (Possibly by looking at the
betting data!)

There are lots of "noise sources" in such a probabalistic scheme of
sidebets based on outcomes which not even a skilled assassin can control.

>There are alternatives, like posting a photo of the corpse to
>a time-stamping service and then to Usenet, though this adds
>some risk to the assassination, and is less useful for
>public killings (e.g. if the President gets shot,
>and there's a well-known address for the assassination pool,
>the White House Press Corps may try to get their photographs
>into the pool before sending them to Reuters and, umm, AP.)

The "proof" issue has been discussed at various times over the past several
years. This is a matter for the contract negotiations (so to speak). The
purchaser of a hit may specify to the escrow agent that the untraceable
funds are to be anonymously mailed (using message pools, for example) only
if a Quicktime movie of the hit actually happening are submitted. (It would
be fairly trivial to attach a small camcorder to a riflescope, for example,
showing the target being killed by a sniper. Other similar options,
essentially impossible to spoof by pretenders, are quite easy to imagine.
Depends on the method of hitting, of course.)

>The assassin still has to make sure he gets paid, and Bell suggests
>(incorrectly, I think) that since all the payer is doing is
>running a lottery, not contracting for killings, that the payer
>could be a persistent entity with some reputation capital
>who has an incentive to pay off.

As has also been discussed for almost 10 years now, third-party anonymous
escrow agents, whose business is only the holding of funds for release
under conditions they judge to have been met, is an elegant and robust
solution.


>
>>Now in light of the fact that when the target has many enemies the
>>assassination becomes a non-excludable public good, it is almost certain
>>that the scheme cannot actually work in practice.  All of the potential
>>payers would rather free-ride and let others pay, so the public good ends
>>up not being "produced".
>
>I think Bell is imagining that a lot of people would be willing to
>pay $5 for killing high-profile targets, like a few IRS agents,
>so this wouldn't be a problem for the targets _he_ wants killed off.
>Getting people to chip in large amounts of money is tougher.

And it is far, far likelier that someone will use untraceable mechanisms
(cash, markets, escrow) to have an enemy whacked than that a cumbersome,
probabalisitic, highly-publicized market will develop.


--Tim May

There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws.
Only one response to the key grabbers is warranted: "Death to Tyrants!"
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^1398269     | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

Vladimir Z. Nuri wrote:
> TCM
> >Nonsense. The mechanisms for arranging the hit are untraceable. Thus, it
> >hardly matters who the "suspects" are, as nothing is provable. (Assuming no
> >implicating ephemera are left lying around on disk drives....)
> >
> >By the way, this is not really Bell's "assassination politics," this is
> >just anonymous contract killings, known about to some of us since Chaum's
> >work was first published...cf. my own "Crypto Anarchist Manifesto," 1988.
> >
> >I may sound touchy on this issue, but I'm seeing more and more articles
> >here and relayed from outside essentially giving Bell the credit for
> >inventing these kinds of markets, when in fact he's a relative latecomer.
> 
> why be bashful, timmy? go ahead and say it. 
> "I invented the concept of anonymous contract killings via cyberspace, 
> and I'm quite proud of this, and it annoys me when people don't give me 
> proper credit"

And an incredible insight it was, also!  Imagine the mind it took to 
combine the notion of anonymity on the net with contract killings.  
One boggles at the creativity, the depth, the sheer GENIUS.  We 
shouldn't worry too much about his petty desire to be remembered for 
his discoveries.

Of course, Bell did ADD a significant wrinkle, and deserves credit 
for his contributions.  May and Bell.  Names that will be 
remembered.  

TruthMonger

Tim May <tcmay@got.net> wrote:
>At 4:02 AM -0700 6/10/97, Anonymous wrote:
>>Not likely, but for another reason.  Assuming you had the money to take
>>out your neighbor, it's going to be fairly obvious who did it.  (How many
>>neighbors do you have?  Pretty short list of suspects.)
>
>Nonsense. The mechanisms for arranging the hit are untraceable. Thus, it
>hardly matters who the "suspects" are, as nothing is provable. (Assuming no
>implicating ephemera are left lying around on disk drives....)

People do not just go kill their neighbors for no reason; there is going
to be some dispute or history of antagonism between them.  Investigators
almost always start by questioning the usual suspects.

The technology may be perfect, but human error will get you every time.


>By the way, this is not really Bell's "assassination politics," this is
>just anonymous contract killings, known about to some of us since Chaum's
>work was first published...cf. my own "Crypto Anarchist Manifesto," 1988.

We know Bell didn't invent it, but who is really eager to go to the
prosecutors in Washington and tell them "It was all my idea."