Blockchain Empowers Social Resistance and Terrorism Through Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

[jim bell]

https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1743&context=jss

[PARTIAL QUOTE FOLLOWS]
Journal of Strategic SecurityVolume 13 Number 1 Article 3
 Blockchain Empowers Social Resistance and Terrorism Through Decentralized Autonomous  Organizations
Armin KrishnanEast Carolina University, krishnana at ecu.edu 

Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/jsspp. 41-58 Recommended CitationKrishnan, Armin. "Blockchain Empowers Social Resistance and TerrorismThrough Decentralized Autonomous Organizations." Journal of StrategicSecurity 13, no. 1 (2020) : 41-58.DOI: https://doi.org/10.5038/1944-0472.13.1.1743Available at: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/jss/vol13/iss1/3 


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"A new decentralized Silk Road for illicit goods and content could appear atany time that uses smart contracts to manage orders, to accept and releasepayments, and to deduct a founders’ fee, without the need of the operatorsto leave behind many digital fingerprints, if any at all. It might beimpossible to shut down a blockchain-based Silk Road, especially if itsnodes were numerous and spread across multiple jurisdictions.48Obviously, blockchain and smart contracts would also lend themselves tothe use for blackmail and for dead hand switches that automaticallyrelease content based on pre-programmed conditions. For example, if acertain transaction on the blockchain has not taken place at a specificpoint of time, it can trigger the smart contract function, which executes aprogram. 
"One can also imagine the use of a DAO to facilitate an anonymousassassination market, which is a concept originally proposed by anarchistJim Bell in his 1994 essay “Assassination Politics.” Bell wrote, “While it'scomparatively easy to “get away with murder,” it’s a lot harder to rewardthe person who does it, and that person is definitely taking a serious risk.’49 His solution is an anonymous assassination market, where individualscan anonymously contribute funds for the assassination of a celebrity to alegal organization and whoever guesses the correct death date of thecelebrity receives all the money donated. A high enough fee for making abet would discourage contributors from making random guesses. As thecontributions increase, so would the incentives for somebody to kill theunpopular celebrity and collect the money.
 "In the blockchain age a smart contract can govern such an arrangement.The assassin could be confident that the sponsoring organization willmake the payment for a correct bet and would be able to collect the moneyin an anonymous fashion. An anonymous vote by all contributors couldestablish whether the celebrity has died and could automatically releaseaccumulated funds to the correct guesser. 
"According to a report by Vice,people already use the prediction platform Augur to make bets on “thedeaths of public figures, including Betty White, Donald Trump, Jeff Bezos,and Warren Buffett.”50 The practical advantage of an assassination marketfor those participating is that it creates legal challenges as to whetherJournal of Strategic Security, Vol. 13, No. 1https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/jss/vol13/iss1/3DOI: https://doi.org/10.5038/1944-0472.13.1.174351making a bet constitutes the incitement of murder and also who could becharged with it in case of a large number of people contributing money tothe cause of compensating somebody who makes a correct prediction. 
Blockchain-Enabled Political Revolutions 
"During the Arab Spring small groups of activists could mobilize the massesagainst the respective government through tweets, Facebook posts, andtext messaging. The Egyptian government became so desperate at onepoint that they temporarily shut down the Internet and mobile servicesnation-wide on January 28, 2011 to prevent the coordination ofanticipated mass protests.51 After the Arab Spring, many authoritariangovernments cracked down on social media and NGOs. Major social mediaplatforms and search engines, most importantly Facebook, Twitter, andGoogle now face strong political demands to police content under thethreat of onerous regulation and fines. Peter Singer and EmersonBrooking have pointed out that the social media companies have assumedthe functions of government and that “they are now grappled withintractable political problems,” adding that the problems are of “the kind[that are] always destined to leave a portion of its constituentsdispleased.”52
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