At 8:15 PM 2/13/96 -0500, Declan B. McCullagh wrote:
Excerpts from internet.cypherpunks: 13-Feb-96 Re: V-chips, CC, and Motorc.. by Bill Frantz@netcom.com
Adding money to the pot will attract rational (and amoral) people who will then make a determination based on (1) profit, and (2) risk, which includes getting caught or killed. It seems to me that Secret Service levels of protection can protect a public figure against even Assassination Politics.
That may well be true, but speaking as someone who's worked on U.S. Presidential campaigns, that kind of protection is expensive, time-consuming, intrusive, and unlikely to be extended.
I assume that both Declan and Jim Bell agree that people high in the government will be immune because they already enjoy this level of protection (limitation one). So the only people we can hit are the cannon fodder, not the ones who gave the orders. It has always been this way with war. If, after a couple of the Waco people had been hit, I was given the responsibility to protect them I would proceed as follews: (1) Gather them and their families onto some Army base and step up the patrols. Now I have them safe. (2) Train and release them thru the witness protection program. Cost $20,000/person (if I remember the article John Young posted a pointer to correctly. (Thanks John)) This is probably about the same as the cost of their training, so it makes economic sense. (3) Make sure that the names/faces of the cannon fodder in future actions are not available to make it harder to target the guilty. Bill