Assassination Politics

[grarpamp]

Assassination Politics (1997) (cryptome.org)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6544251
http://cryptome.org/ap.htm
	39 points by kilroy123 on Oct 13, 2013 | hide | past | favorite | 62 comments


https://twitter.com/pro2rat/status/389410900832038912
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Bell
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/09/30/a-ceo-who-resisted-nsa-spying-is-out-of-prison-and-he-feels-vindicated-by-snowden-leaks/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D64KcZsD82E
https://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/as-always-stand-up-to-be-counted-and-youll-likely-be-shot-down-20130110-2cixc.html
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/aug/20/civil-disobedience-sanchez-gordillo
https://www.amazon.com/Machine-Kills-Secrets-EmpowerWhistleblowers-ebook/dp/B007HUD7LU/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restorative_justice
https://www.amazon.com/Anarchy-State-Utopia-Robert-Nozick/dp/0465097200/
https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Times-Revised-Edition-Perennial/dp/0060935502
https://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2013/07/in_case_of_revo.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_gubernatorial_recall_election
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment
https://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704009804575308440143301092.html
https://assmkedzgorodn7o.onion/


cryptome on Oct 13, 2013 | next [–]

Jim Bell is out of prison after 10 years and remains defiant and is
posting again on one of his original fora, cypherpunks. The archives
has Jim's recent posts:

http://cpunks.org/pipermail/cypherpunks/

Subscribe to cpunks: https://cpunks.org/mailman/listinfo/cypherpunks

Then there is CJ, Carl Johnson, who was sent to prison for supporting
Bell. He is on Twitter among other places, also still promoting AP
defiantly: https://twitter.com/pro2rat

Neither are interested in remaining anonymous.

	
	
anthonyb on Oct 14, 2013 | parent | next [–]

Not just AP, but nuking people you don't like, too:
https://twitter.com/pro2rat/status/389410900832038912

	
	
triplesec on Oct 14, 2013 | root | parent | next [–]

This is the biggest issue with AP. Where down the line you stop, in
assassinating leaders? With what criteria?

	
	
rdl on Oct 14, 2013 | prev | next [–]

I got "invited" to federal court over this (I ran the mailing list
archive at MIT which USG used as evidence). I was outside the US at
the time, working on anon ecash in the Caribbean, so it was a request,
not a demand. I met Jennifer Granick as a result, and learned the "if
you can possibly avoid it, never ever set foot inside federal court"
rule, which has subsequently served me quite well.

Jim Bell probably tops weev as an unsympathetic defendant.

	
	
angersock on Oct 14, 2013 | parent | next [–]

I met Jennifer Granick as a result, and learned the "if you can
possibly avoid it, never ever set foot inside federal court" rule,
which has subsequently served me quite well.

Would you be able to elaborate on that any further?

	
	
rdl on Oct 14, 2013 | root | parent | next [–]

I was outside the USA, and it was just a request with no legal weight.
I stayed on a tiny island in the Caribbean for the duration of the
trial. (It wasn't a big deal to FBI, either -- I answered their
questions through counsel, and the whole thing was essentially a
formality. Jim Bell was posting to a public list for which I
maintained public archives, so I had no legal or moral duty to him or
anyone else.

I was 18 or 19, and almost went because it would have been a free trip
to DC and potentially interesting, but the correctly raised concern is
that I could have been ordered to remain available if I had been
there. Not worth the risk, especially since I wasn't particularly
helpful to anyone (I would have been fine with helping IRS CID when a
guy was posting personal threats on people publicly)

I actually tried to explain to both sides that my archiver wasn't
assured to be canonical; it was just a regular list subscriber, with a
simple to discover email address, and no inbound filtering (since cp
list addresses were distributed and constantly changing), so anyone
could post random messages to it. Even worse, sending a forged message
id with new content would overwrite the original message.

	
	
fiatmoney on Oct 13, 2013 | prev | next [–]

The saga of Jim Bell after the publication of that essay provides an
excellent case study in why people like "Satoshi" have an interest in
remaining as anonymous as possible.

	
	
csense on Oct 13, 2013 | parent | next [–]

I wasn't familiar with this, but Wikipedia knows of this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Bell

There are many excellent reasons for remaining anonymous or
pseudonymous, both online and offline.

That being said, there's a vast difference between inventing a
disruptive technology and advocating (even in jest) the killing of
government officials.

I'm not taking the position that governments never unjustly harass
disruptive technologists. Nor am I taking the position that the
treatment of this particular jesting assassination advocate was fair
or proportionate. Nor am I taking the position that government
officials are incapable of crimes worthy of a death sentence [1]
(think of the executions of Nazi war criminals after World War 2).

I'm simply saying that the situations of Satoshi and Jim Bell aren't
really comparable.

[1] Although, even for people who really deserve it, I'd really rather
not have death sentences recommended and carried out by the totally
lawless process Mr. Bell jestingly advocated in a country I have to
live in.

	
	
fennecfoxen on Oct 14, 2013 | root | parent | next [–]

First of all, based on that essay, it's entirely plausible to believe
that Jim Bell is in fact guilty of felony tax evasion (and possibly
more).

However, it seems kind of crappy that the government response to a
controversial exercise of first-amendment rights is to look really
hard at you, dig up some dirt, and get you sent to jail. (Or make some
dirt -- or at least trump up the charges if the dirt's not enough.)

(A similar revenge case may have been brought against the CEO of
Qwest, for a more 4th-amendment/NSA angle; in this case the charges
that may have been trumped up were insider-trading charges, and
certain evidence about the government's motives was excluded from the
trial by the judge. Here's an article we've discussed in these fora
before: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/09/30...
)

	
	
_delirium on Oct 14, 2013 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Part of the issue with Bell is that it's not clear to anyone that it
was really in jest, or even just a hypothetical future proposal. He
proposed an assassination market, and was collecting home addresses of
IRS and FBI officials, coincidentally.

	
	
aidenn0 on Oct 14, 2013 | prev | next [–]

If you and contribute funds to pay an anonymous assassin, you've
committed attempted murder. If the anonymous assassin succeeds, you
can be tried for murder even if they never locate the assassin.

	
	
anthonyb on Oct 14, 2013 | parent | next [–]

Interesting that the libertarian solution to someone violating your
rights seems to be to violate their rights back in even more
spectacular and violent fashion.

	
	
msandford on Oct 14, 2013 | root | parent | next [–]

In a just world do you lose rights when you violate another's?

Most people would accept that it's moral for someone who's threatened
with a gun by another to kill that other person, thus preserving their
own life.

Many would still accept as moral the same situation, but where the
assailant has a knife.

Many would again accept as moral everything the same, except instead
of someone intent to kill with a knife, an assailant who only intended
to rob.

Robbery is taking a thing against the wishes/desires/rights of another.

Some might argue that the government collecting taxes is robbery by
that definition and thus they have the moral right to defend their
property with deadly force. The government certainly will use force to
ensure that it gets it's taxes. They won't shoot you but they will
take away your freedom and the only way they can do that is with force
or the threat of force.

At what point do you disagree with that line of thinking? Why? I'm not
trolling you, genuinely curious.

	
	
anthonyb on Oct 14, 2013 | root | parent | next [–]

In this case, there is no overt threat - the government employee is
not holding a gun to your head, so you have no right to kill him.

Most people are not very even handed when they feel that their rights
have been violated, so it tends to lead to escalation, and tribal/gang
style violence, tit-for-tat.

It's much better IMO for a society to deal with disputes by legal
means, not by stalking, harassing and killing each other, eg. if I
shoot you in self defence, then that's 1 person's worth of
productivity lost to the world, similarly if I harass you and threaten
you at your home address (0.5 x PP?).

And yes, if you consistently violate other people's rights, or act
with poor judgement, then you should lose rights. For example, if
you're in the US and threaten people with a gun, you should lose the
right to carry a gun, or the right to not be searched.

	
	
msandford on Oct 14, 2013 | root | parent | next [–]

So immediate threats aren't OK but eventual ones are? I guess I can
see how a person might think that way.

What if the US had a post-earning tax where the tax collector had to
physically come to your house and demand the money that the government
said you owed it. And he was armed. And he made the threat of violence
personally rather than through a large bureaucracy? Would that change
things? Why or why not? Again, not trolling but genuinely interested.

Agree 100% that people don't react well when they feel their rights
are being violated. The loss of agency and personal sovereignty is a
really big deal.

I'm with you on the loss of rights examples you give up to a point.
I'm totally on board with situational loss of rights (I threaten you
with a gun and you're in the right to shoot me) but I'm less in favor
of doing that systematically. Mostly because of how safe things are
these days (I think quite good) versus the potential for abuse (I
think quite high).

	
	
anthonyb on Oct 14, 2013 | root | parent | next [–]

I'm not sure why people with a libertarian bent have to keep bringing
guns into arguments. The Rule of Law is one of modern societies great
inventions, as long as all parties agree to abide by it. When they
don't, organised opposition (eg. protests) and negotiation are usually
far better at instigating change than randomly shooting back.

It's very much an i-win-you-lose mindset, I don't think it's really
based much in reality and I'd rather not live anywhere near a society
based on those principles.

	
	
msandford on Oct 14, 2013 | root | parent | next [–]

Because a gun is an excellent example of force, coercion or violence.
If someone points a gun at you, you know exactly what it means.

The laws, the courts, everything else is ultimately backed up by
violence or the threat of violence. If you are convicted of a crime
and you say you don't want to go to jail there are people whose job it
is to MAKE you go to jail. If you cooperate, the threat of violence
doesn't turn into actual violence but if you do not, it will
materialize.

It's probably the easiest way to cut out the myriad different ways
that the state will back up it's laws with actions and cut to the
chase: you can choose not to comply but you will pay dearly for it.

	
	
anthonyb on Oct 14, 2013 | root | parent | next [–]

All of which ignores that there are many different ways of interacting
with the state without resorting to violence, in favour of a nice
soundbite.

"Libertarian or people pointing guns at you" is a false dichotomy.

	
	
msandford on Oct 14, 2013 | root | parent | next [–]

Yeah sure there's a million ways but ultimately if you don't do what
you're supposed to, that threat is there.

I'm not suggesting that false dichotomy, you are. What I am suggesting
is that the state exists in it's current form largely because it does
hold the monopoly on violence. The very definition of government is
that it's the entity with the monopoly on violence.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D64KcZsD82E

How many steps removed does the guy toting the gun have to be in order
for the implicit threat of violence to be OK? Zero? Two? Eight? How
does the abstraction of that implicit threat make it any more
palatable?

	
	
randallsquared on Oct 14, 2013 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

> I'm not sure why people with a libertarian bent have to keep bringing guns into arguments.

Because if someone chooses to not obey, they will eventually face a
gun which they did not bring.

	
	
anthonyb on Oct 14, 2013 | root | parent | next [–]

Or legal action!

Of course, shooting people over "legal action" sounds crazy, so to
make yourself sound better you'd better keep talking about guns.

Edit: Here's a good example of the alternative to shooting people,
from Bob Brown, former leader of the Greens here in Australia:

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/as-...

a) it works, and b) if you can't find 1000 people who are also willing
to come and protest, perhaps your cause isn't that worthwhile?

	
	
krapp on Oct 14, 2013 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Surely the libertarian model amounts to something more productive than
"the state will shoot you if you aren't ready to shoot them first?"

	
	
msandford on Oct 14, 2013 | root | parent | next [–]

Yeah it's more about people interacting in a voluntary manner. The
first and probably last rule of libertarian philosophy is that it's
not OK to initiate aggression against others. So two individuals
entering into a contract is OK but one person threatening another with
violence is not.

The fact that the state/government has a monopoly on violence means
that your interactions with them aren't necessarily voluntary. Many
people don't have a problem with paying for roads, or some semblance
of a military, or schools or whatnot.

But the very nature of a state is that if you don't do what it tells
you to, you have no recourse. Someone might not put a gun to your head
but you have to know that there's no negotiation.

	
	
anthonyb on Oct 14, 2013 | root | parent | next [–]

> you have no recourse ... you have to know that there's no negotiation

Bullshit.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/aug/20/civil-d...

	
	
msandford on Oct 14, 2013 | root | parent | next [–]

If you perform civil disobedience you can and probably will get
arrested. It happens all the time.

Choosing to break an unjust law doesn't mean that a judge will
understand the injustice of it and let you go free, nor is there any
assurance that jury would acquit you. That's what I mean when I say
"there's no negotiation"

Once a police officers decides to arrest you all negotiations have
ceased and they may do whatever the law tells them to, or whatever the
law lets them get away with, or perhaps a bit more.

	
	
krapp on Oct 14, 2013 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

It's not really violence if it's the government you're killing, I guess...

Though this might not be so much a libertarian solution as an example
of the degree to which libertarian ideals can be twisted to achieve
the sort of ends they claim to fight against.

	
	
anthonyb on Oct 14, 2013 | root | parent | next [–]

"Killing the government" is a euphemism. He's talking about killing
government employees who implement things you don't like.

What you're ultimately talking about is terrorism - if you're a
government employee, don't do bad things* or we might "predict" your
death. The choice they're presenting seems to be either bad, violent
actors in government, or bad, violent lynch mobs.

*Where "bad things" might be anything from "invading Iraq" to "free healthcare".

	
	
krapp on Oct 14, 2013 | root | parent | next [–]

And it's no small leap to extend that to any government employee, to
the party, to anyone who votes for the party, to anyone whose politics
you just don't agree with...

	
	
nandemo on Oct 14, 2013 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

It's not fair to call this "the" libertarian solution just because
this guy proposes it and calls himself libertarian. I haven't seen
Rothbard or Friedman advocating wanton killing of government
employees.

	
	
Houshalter on Oct 14, 2013 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

All forms of punishment "violate their rights". Most libertarians are
not pacifists, and most people in general approve of some kind of
consequences for criminals.

	
	
betterunix on Oct 14, 2013 | parent | prev | next [–]

That is why this sort of thing requires the sort of anonymity that
modern cryptography can provide. An anonymous payment sent via an
anonymity system, from some publicly accessible location, would be
very hard to track.

	
	
Zigurd on Oct 14, 2013 | parent | prev | next [–]

If your contribution can be traced. Such a system would not be viable
without at least, deniability if not outright anonymity.

	
	
aidenn0 on Oct 14, 2013 | root | parent | next [–]

I must have misread the article; I thought it was only anonymous for
the assassin (I'm sorry, "predictor").

	
	
dmix on Oct 13, 2013 | prev | next [–]

I first read about "Assassination Markets" in this brilliant book,
that delves into the old 90s cypherpunks mailing list (members which
included Julian Assange and most likely the creator of Bitcoin,
Satoshi):

http://www.amazon.com/Machine-Kills-Secrets-EmpowerWhistlebl...

I still haven't read this full article, mostly just a summary, so here
are my rough thoughts:

It seems like something straight out of an idealistic
anarcho-capitalist society, but it seems to be dangerously crossing
the line out of "non-aggression" and from skimming the article, seems
full of flaws. For example:

> Satisfying as it might be to declare war on asinine pop singers, Bell has a more civic-minded suggestion: Let's kill all the car thieves. He reasons that a very small number of career criminals are responsible for nearly all car thefts. If one million car owners in a given metropolitan area contributed just four dollars a year, it would create $10,000 a day in "prize money" for the "predictor" of any car thief's death.

Is preventing property theft really worth killing a bunch of petty
criminals? I highly doubt it. This tough-love approach to preventing
crime (especially to this extreme) has been a complete failure in the
USA (see their full prison system or the war on drugs).

I'm all for preventative self-defense, but most of this enforcement
bulldozes over root causes of issues (socio-economic, mental illness,
etc). The goal should be compensating victims (ala
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restorative_justice) and long-term
solutions, not creating some esoteric possibility of safety/morality
via threat of violence.

Not only that, and just google "wrongful convictions" or "wrongful
convictions death penalty". Accuracy of information needs strong
information systems and due process (maybe the article discusses
this?) but just having target lists + bets is wildly insufficient.

There has also been a lot of literature against private law
enforcement (counter to many anarcho ideologies) such as by Novick in
his book "Anarchy, State, and Utopia":

http://www.amazon.com/Anarchy-State-Utopia-Robert-Nozick/dp/...

> TLDR: Protective agencies (judges/police) would be competing against each other. That competitive nature combined with their intended role of protecting us (and themselves) would lead to "an endless series of acts of retaliation and exactation of compensations". Also he demonstrates why the nature of both of the businesses would already create natural monopolies in each local jurisdiction.

So even though I personally lean towards libertarian/decentralized
ideas, public courts/judges is likely still the best solution and
anonymous assassination marketplaces sounds dangerously flawed.

	
	
msandford on Oct 13, 2013 | parent | next [–]

The idea of the assassination marketplace as I see it is to provide
some means to balance the power of politicians. There's a powerful
asymmetry at work in politics. Prosecutors can knowingly wrongly
convict people and face no consequences. The President can authorize a
temporary (or perhaps not temporary) war possibly resulting in
thousand of deaths and the worst outcome he faces for it is not
getting a second term.

Given that voting people out of office is not a powerful enough
disincentive to cause them to behave morally I welcome new thoughts on
providing better incentives. I'm not saying that Assassination Markets
are necessarily good but there's an interesting idea there: how to
provide the mass of people recourse to politicians in a manner other
than voting.

	
	
_delirium on Oct 14, 2013 | root | parent | next [–]

Why a marketplace, though? One can already organize resistance against
a regime one considers harmful enough to merit violent resistance, via
militant groups. They can be right-wing groups like the militia
movement or Greece's Golden Dawn, or left-wing groups like the Black
Panthers or Germany's Red Army Faction. They do at various times
assassinate prosecutors or politicians.

An assassination market seems to change the barrier to entry: rather
than personal commitment, it's money. Is that likely to produce better
decisions, when it comes to extralegal assassinations? I don't see a
strong a priori reason to believe that "people wanted dead by people
who have money" is likely to be a good signal. That just seems like a
formalization of the classic mob hit: if you've got enough cash, you
can get anyone offed.

	
	
msandford on Oct 14, 2013 | root | parent | next [–]

Yeah all valid points. That's one of the unintended consequences of
the system: someone with enough money can short-circuit the "voting"
process to get anyone killed.

Let me reiterate: There's a very interesting nugget in there. Namely
one (possibly of many) ways for ordinary citizens to provide less
asymmetric incentives to politicians and bureaucrats.

I'm really interested in alternative methods of achieving similar
goals. Rather than death, could we perhaps institute a petition-based
vote of no confidence that could be binding? I'm not sure how that
would work but it would be a way to kick someone out of office or
position sooner than a term limit and which would also be tremendously
damaging to their reputation; something which seems rather important
to politicians. Maybe you've got other ideas?

EDIT: To answer your question specifically the goal of a marketplace
is similar to voting but one which isn't necessarily scheduled the way
voting is. For example the guy after Obama could win by a 90%
landslide, then immediately launch an all-out war against Iran, Syria
and say Jordan. That might quickly turn the tide from 90% in favor to
80% against, but we'd have to wait at least 2 years to vote out a lot
of people in the House, and four full years to vote the new President
out, and a total of six years to get rid of people in the Senate.

Given that it's not terribly easy to make a living in the US and that
many people have jobs, kids, elderly parents, etc. to prevent a
sizable fraction of those opposed to various things from making a
serious public statement like a march on Washington, lowering the
barrier to entry MIGHT get us better outcomes.

	
	
meepmorp on Oct 14, 2013 | root | parent | next [–]

> For example the guy after Obama could win by a 90% landslide, then immediately launch an all-out war against Iran, Syria and say Jordan

Or, to turn that around the other way, something happens just after
the election which causes 80-90% of the electorate to support an
attack on Iran, Syria, and Jordan. The president after Obama, after
some consideration and discussion with people in her/his cabinet
decides to not attack.

With the threat of death over his/her head, might the president decide
to make a decision, not based on deliberation and careful
consideration, but just as a way to pander to the public lest s/he get
killed. Is that a desirable outcome?

	
	
hga on Oct 14, 2013 | root | parent | next [–]

Anyone who finds the concept potentially appealing really needs to
read up on pre-WWII Japanese politics, where a culture of political
assassination, plus a major flaw in their constitutions, couldn't form
a government without the Army and Navy's assent/membership, pretty
much made the following ugliness inevitable. You really, really don't
want to let such a culture develop.

Paul Johnson's Modern Times devotes a chapter to this:
http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Times-Revised-Edition-Perennial...

	
	
strlen on Oct 15, 2013 | root | parent | next [–]

This was a very enlightening chapter in Modern Times. I truly enjoyed
Johnson's work, despite his clear (if transparent) bias towards
British colonialism.

In general, private armies, political assassinations, and other forms
of political violence seldom lead to good outcomes: other examples
would be Lebanon during and prior to the civil and (not to Godwin
this) Weimar Germany with government-funded but ruthless and private
and political Freikorps, as well as KPD/SPD/NSDAP/etc... paramilitary
organizations. Finally, if a government enacts and enforces laws and
decrees contrary to the constitution and human rights in general
(i.e., it is no longer a constitutional state), introduction of
political gives government forces both an excuse and the means to
start acting fully extra-judicially.

I'll note that I'm saying this as a individual with classical
liberal/libertarian political leanings and as a strong supporter of a
right to bear arms. My view is shared with by David Friedman, an
anarcho-capitalist (a view that I don't subscribe to, but respect):
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2013/07/in_case_of_revo....

	
	
msandford on Oct 14, 2013 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

An excellent point. I've always assumed that most people don't want to
expend dollars and lives on wars but that doesn't necessarily hold
true.

Personally I'm more interested in the nugget of insight than
necessarily the exact methods he outlines.

For all the million little ways that the government involves itself in
our daily lives there is huge asymmetry and thus plenty of opportunity
for injustice.

For the really big things there is also huge asymmetry. If something
is a really big deal and even 10% of the US population went to
Washington to protest you'd probably see a swift reaction. That's a
really good thing and it's one of the reasons that many systems of
representative government do work.

The question in my mind is: What is the price for big freedoms in
terms of little freedoms, and is this a good bargain? Personally I'd
like to have my big freedoms AND my little ones too. So any kind of
thought along those lines is interesting even if it's not ultimately
good.

The thing I took away from the article most is that there probably are
ways to give the people more freedom on the little things without
necessarily compromising on the big ones. Not necessarily via
Assassination Markets, but SOMEHOW.

	
	
_delirium on Oct 14, 2013 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Recall elections are one way that's sometimes used to handle the
"electee turns around and goes nuts" problem: if enough people
petition, an early election is held, so people get another chance to
vote on whether they want to keep the representative. Example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_gubernatorial_recall...

A downside of that is that it can intensify populism, since you are
essentially always campaigning, never governing. One person wins, but
instead of getting a few years to try their agenda, the opposite party
is every day looking for openings to get them booted out of office
early. An in-between idea is just the classic impeachment. It can
remove someone from office early, but is supposed to be used only for
serious breaches of trust or lawlessness, not mere political
disagreement. If Obama totally went nuts, Congress could remove him
from office, if they weren't also on board.

Overall I think I'm more worried about constant campaigning (and the
amplification of political advertising and PACs that entails), so
these various measures strike me as more worrying than the problems
they try to solve.

	
	
msandford on Oct 14, 2013 | root | parent | next [–]

Also an excellent point. I'm a libertarian and I'm thoroughly fed up
with both parties; neither hold true to their supposed core ideology
when faced with the choice to do the right thing or to accrete more
power. As such I'm really interested in ways to scare the shit out of
politicians in the hope that they'll think LONG and HARD about whether
what's being proposed is RIGHT or EXPEDIENT. As such the whole notion
has a certain appeal, it's a way to try and curb particularly
egregious abuses of power.

For example you might see $50mm worth of bounties on a lot of
higher-ups at the NSA for letting this
spying-on-innocent-as-well-as-guilty Americans business go on for so
long. Those programs might then get shut down, or at the very least
those people might retire to very private places immediately.

Possibilities for abuse? Absolutely. Are those abuses worse than what
the folks in power are currently doing to us? That all depends on your
viewpoint. I'm honestly not sure where I stand on that one because
it's really tough to figure out the exact magnitude of the unintended
consequences of any change in policy.

	
	
krapp on Oct 14, 2013 | root | parent | next [–]

>For example you might see $50mm worth of bounties on a lot of higher-ups at the NSA for letting this spying-on-innocent-as-well-as-guilty Americans business go on for so long. Those programs might then get shut down, or at the very least those people might retire to very private places immediately.

Or you'll get bounties put out on postal workers because the Post
Office is secretly reading everyone's mail.

I would submit that out of the pool of people willing to participate
in an assassination-for-hire marketplace, few are likely to be
reasonable in what they would consider a killing offense.

	
	
msandford on Oct 14, 2013 | root | parent | next [–]

The Post Office example isn't very good because most mail carriers
don't serve more than a few thousand people (maybe a lot less in the
'burbs) so it would be very hard to get enough money together to make
it worthwhile to kill any one individual. But the greater point, that
people could act irrationally and cause entirely innocent people to be
killed is still a possibility and tough to refute.

	
	
krapp on Oct 14, 2013 | root | parent | next [–]

I really do find it difficult to believe that an
assassination-for-hire marketplace would be mostly utilized by
reasonable people anyway.

	
	
polarix on Oct 14, 2013 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

The point is deeper than this -- with such a system in place, one must
never even attach their real name or address to controversial ideas.

This would allow thought to proceed on pure merit, rather than social proof.

	
	
krapp on Oct 14, 2013 | root | parent | next [–]

But such a system only has the purpose of having people killed for
money. There wouldn't be any other ideas discussed, except maybe
haggling over whether to use a gun or a knife or maybe anthrax if the
price is right.

An assassination program like this more or less defies the concept of
'ideas based on merit.'

	
	
polarix on Oct 14, 2013 | root | parent | next [–]

Oh, but the effects would be wide-ranging: if an idea has enough of a
likelihood of angering people past some threshold (either lots of
people, or a few rich ones), then it will only be reasonable to air
that idea under strong pseudonymity.

Participating in this marketplace would be somewhat like voting,
except it would have a tangible effect.

	
	
krapp on Oct 14, 2013 | root | parent | next [–]

If you're talking about a marketplace of ideas and collective action,
fine. I'm all for communication without oppression.

But a marketplace for violence is just as bad or even worse than the
implicit violence of the state in my opinion. While I believe that
sometimes violence might be necessary to oppose tyranny, I don't know
that I trust the 'justness' of a system which presumes anyone employed
by the state should find themselves subject to that kind of threat.
Eventually (inevitably) it would wind up being used as a tool for
political and ethnic genocide. Or petty crime.

	
	
tedks on Oct 14, 2013 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

> One can already organize resistance against a regime one considers harmful enough to merit violent resistance, via militant groups.

Because successful states (i.e., not Greece) have vast amounts of
institutional knowledge and training on how to infiltrate and destroy
radical groups in the embryonic stage. There will never be anything
remotely like the Red Army Faction in the USA or Europe as long as the
FBI still has any amount of funding. Or even local police, for that
matter. In the US, virtually every dissident group is guaranteed to be
monitored by police, if not actively infiltrated. It's hard enough to
organize unpermitted protests, let alone jailbreaks or breakfast
programs.

Assassination markets work around this by reducing the need for
organized groups.

	
	
afarrell on Oct 14, 2013 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Volunteer for their campaigns and provide them with detailed technical
and experiential insight into legislation. The reason that lobbyists
are so powerful is that they can offer politicians what they need to
keep their jobs do their jobs: - Information on legislation that they
don't have the time to gather because a person cannot be a lawyer, an
engineer of many types, a scientist of many types, a businessman in
many industries, and a military officer. - Money so that they can pay
for people to knock on doors and build their website and do all the
gruntwork of managing a staff.

And yes, the people writing legal code should be lawyers or at least
highly knowledgable in the law.

	
	
dredmorbius on Oct 15, 2013 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

The mechanism of impeachment was included in the US Constitution (at
the insistence of Benjamin Franklin as I recall) to provide a specific
alternative to assassination for removing politicians from office. It
actually dates to 14th century England I learn just now checking
Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment#History

Assassination is ... rather fraught. I'm growing increasingly
concerned over the stalemate / obstructionist politics of the US and
elsewhere, however.

	
	
kilroy123 on Oct 14, 2013 | parent | prev | next [–]

What's frighting to me, is someone could attempt to build an
"Assassination Market" with: tor, bitcoins, and a single website.

But I'm skeptical this would really work. Just look the 25 million
dollar bounty on Osama bin laden, which no one tried claimed. (That's
just reporting him) Maybe, it would work if you didn't go through a
government to try to claim your reward, but I'm still skeptical.

Still, I think if a "bounty" was out for someone on a tor website,
that would make for some huge headlines. Plus spook the person enough
to get their attention.

	
	
AndrewKemendo on Oct 14, 2013 | root | parent | next [–]

Not for nothing Gary Brooks Faulkner supposedly "attempted" to
assassinate Bin Ladin.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870400980457530...

	
	
sanjuro on Oct 14, 2013 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

It has already happened. Here's my website: http://assmkedzgorodn7o.onion/

	
	
kilroy123 on Oct 14, 2013 | root | parent | next [–]

I wouldn't mess around with this if I were you. It may have taken the
FBI a while to bring down the Silk Road, but with this kind of thing,
you'll have the CIA and NSA after you.

	
	
techdragon on Oct 15, 2013 | root | parent | next [–]

Now this is going to be a story to watch.

I look forward to seeing if that guy ever posts again lol.

	
	
krapp on Oct 14, 2013 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Anyone foolish enough to try it deserves what they'll get.

	
	
sanjuro on Oct 14, 2013 | prev | next [–]

I'm actually attempting to start such a market.

Here's a link: http://assmkedzgorodn7o.onion/ If you don't have Tor
installed you can also access the site by adding .to:
http://assmkedzgorodn7o.onion.to/

	
	
techdragon on Oct 15, 2013 | parent | next [–]

You sir are literally going to become a case study in how to/not to do
this sort of thing.

I have zero advice for you. Im sure you will be front page news soon enough.

	
	
andyzweb on Oct 13, 2013 | prev [–]

another cryptome/internet classic