-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- (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 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6 iQCVAwUBLoHebxByYwhWPvz1AQEd9wP+PaxvOdYbRFJ5AN+RwPT3xNJCf/LBAYXB zeV7/eqjmXQGj9U55FIenw0aIft4si95h3aauB+9/n+PZOtJI7VOoz3igGMTiXX2 0OGqrO2RCrpruH+hc2g8o/xUL/aFsqIVlEJuDmadBeulHTj+Fr16BfTUJ5YjX1rQ scDNLGnR9DA= =wtty -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----