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/