Bell, Jim - Assassination Politics.pdf

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3 April 1997
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http://www.infowar.com/class_1/BELL1.html-ssi
Assassination Politics
by Jim Bell
Part 1
I've been following the concepts of digital cash and encryption since I read the article in the
August 1992 issue of
Scientific American
on"encrypted signatures." While I've only followed
the Digitaliberty area for a few weeks, I can already see a number of points that do (and
should!) strongly concern the average savvy individual:
1. How can we translate the freedom afforded by the Internet to ordinary life?
2. How can we keep the government from banning encryption, digital cash, and other systems
that will improve our freedom?
A few months ago, I had a truly and quite literally "revolutionary" idea, and I jokingly called it
"Assassination Politics": I speculated on the question of whether an organization could be set up
to legally announce that it would be awarding a cash prize to somebody who correctly
"predicted" the death of one of a list of violators of rights, usually either government
employees, officeholders, or appointees. It could ask for anonymous contributions from the
public, and individuals would be able send those contributions using digital cash.
I also speculated that using modern methods of public-key encryption and anonymous "digital
cash," it would be possible to make such awards in such a way so that nobody knows who is
getting awarded the money, only that the award is being given. Even the organization itself
would have no information that could help the authorities find the person responsible for the
prediction, let alone the one who caused the death.
It was not my intention to provide such a "tough nut to crack" by arguing the general case,
claiming that a person who hires a hit man is not guilty of murder under libertarian principles.
Obviously, the problem with the general case is that the victim may be totally innocent under
libertarian principles, which would make the killing a crime, leading to the question of whether
the person offering the money was himself guilty.
On the contrary; my speculation assumed that the "victim" is a government employee,
presumably one who is not merely taking a paycheck of stolen tax dollars, but also is guilty of
extra violations of rights beyond this. (Government agents responsible for the Ruby Ridge
incident and Waco come to mind.) In receiving such money and in his various acts, he violates
the "Non-aggression Principle" (NAP) and thus, presumably, any acts against him are not the
initiation of force under libertarian principles.
The organization set up to manage such a system could, presumably, make up a list of people
who had seriously violated the NAP, but who would not see justice in our courts due to the fact
that their actions were done at the behest of the government. Associated with each name would
be a dollar figure, the total amount of money the organization has received as a contribution,
which is the amount they would give for correctly "predicting" the person's death, presumably
naming the exact date. "Guessers" would formulate their "guess" into a file, encrypt it with the
organization's public key, then transmit it to the organization, possibly using methods as
untraceable as putting a floppy disk in an envelope and tossing it into a mailbox, but more likely
either a cascade of encrypted anonymous remailers, or possibly public-access Internet locations,
such as terminals at a local library, etc.
In order to prevent such a system from becoming simply a random unpaid lottery, in which
people can randomly guess a name and date (hoping that lightning would strike, as it
occasionally does), it would be necessary to deter such random guessing by requiring the
"guessers" to include with their "guess" encrypted and untraceable "digital cash," in an amount
sufficiently high to make random guessing impractical.
For example, if the target was, say, 50 years old and had a life expectancy of 30 years, or about
10,000 days, the amount of money required to register a guess must be at least 1/10,000th of the
amount of the award. In practice, the amount required should be far higher, perhaps as much as
1/1000 of the amount, since you can assume that anybody making a guess would feel
sufficiently confident of that guess to risk 1/1000th of his potential reward.
The digital cash would be placed inside the outer "encryption envelope," and could be
decrypted using the organization's public key. The prediction itself (including name and date)
would be itself in another encryption envelope inside the first one, but it would be encrypted
using a key that is only known to the predictor himself. In this way, the organization could
decrypt the outer envelope and find the digital cash, but they would have no idea what is being
predicted in the innermost envelope, either the name or the date.
If, later, the "prediction" came true, the predictor would presumably send yet another encrypted
"envelope" to the organization, containing the decryption key for the previous "prediction"
envelope, plus a public key (despite its name, to be used only once!) to be used for encryption
of digital cash used as payment for the award. The organization would apply the decryption key
to the prediction envelope, discover that it works, then notice that the prediction included was
fulfilled on the date stated. The predictor would be, therefore, entitled to the award.
Nevertheless, even then nobody would actually know WHO he is!
It doesn't even know if the predictor had anything to do with the outcome of the prediction. If it
received these files in the mail, in physical envelopes which had no return address, it would
have burned the envelopes before it studied their contents. The result is that even the active
cooperation of the organization could not possibly help anyone, including the police, to locate
the predictor.
Also included within this "prediction-fulfilled" encryption envelope would be unsigned
(not-yet-valid) "digital cash," which would then be blindly signed by the organization's bank
and subsequently encrypted using the public key included. (The public key could also be
publicized, to allow members of the public to securely send their comments and, possibly,
further grateful remuneration to the predictor, securely.) The resulting encrypted file could be
published openly on the Internet, and it could then be decrypted by only one entity: The person
who had made that original, accurate prediction. The result is that the recipient would be
absolutely untraceable.
The digital cash is then processed by the recipient by "unbinding" it, a principle which is
explained in far greater detail by the article in the August 1992 issue of Scientific American.
The resulting digital cash is absolutely untraceable to its source.
This overall system achieves a number of goals. First, it totally hides the identity of the
predictor to the organization, which makes it unnecessary for any potential predictor to "trust"
them to not reveal his name or location. Second, it allows the predictor to make his prediction
without revealing the actual contents of that prediction until later, when he chooses to, assuring
him that his "target" cannot possibly get early warning of his intent (and "failed" predictions
need never be revealed). In fact, he needs never reveal his prediction unless he wants the award.
Third, it allows the predictor to anonymously grant his award to anyone else he chooses, since
he may give this digital cash to anyone without fear that it will be traced.
For the organization, this system also provides a number of advantages .By hiding the identity
of the predictor from even it, the organization cannot be forced to reveal it, in either civil or
criminal court. This should also shield the organization from liability, since it will not know the
contents of any "prediction" until after it comes true. (Even so, the organization would be
deliberately kept "poor" so that it would be judgment-proof.) Since presumably most of the laws
the organization might be accused of violating would require that the violator have specific or
prior knowledge, keeping itself ignorant of as many facts as possible, for as long as possible,
would presumably make it very difficult to prosecute.
Part 2
"At the Village Pizza shop, as they were sitting down to consume a pepperoni, Dorothy asked
Jim, 'So what other inventions are you working on?" Jim replied, 'I've got a new idea, but it's
really evolutionary. Literally REVOLUTIONARY.' 'Okay, Jim, which government are you
planning to overthrow?,' she asked, playing along.
'All of them,' answered Jim."
Political Implications
Imagine for a moment that as ordinary citizens were watching the evening news, they see an act
by a government employee or officeholder that they feel violates their rights, abuses the public's
trust, or misuses the powers that they feel should be limited. A person whose actions are so
abusive or improper that the citizenry shouldn't have to tolerate it.
What if they could go to their computers, type in the miscreant's name, and select a dollar
amount: The amount they, themselves, would be willing to pay to anyone who "predicts" that
officeholder's death. That donation would be sent, encrypted and anonymously, to a central
registry organization, and be totaled, with the total amount available within seconds to any
interested individual. If only 0.1% of the population, or one person in a thousand, was willing to
pay $1 to see some government slimeball dead, that would be, in effect, a $250,000 bounty on
his head.
Further, imagine that anyone considering collecting that bounty could do so with the
mathematical certainty that he could not be identified, and could collect the reward without
meeting, or even talking to, anybody who could later identify him. Perfect anonymity, perfect
secrecy, and perfect security. And that, combined with the ease and security with which these
contributions could be collected, would make being an abusive government employee an
extremely risky proposition. Chances are good that nobody above the level of county
commissioner would even risk staying in office.
Just how would this change politics in America? It would take far less time to answer, "What
would remain the same?" No longer would we be electing people who will turn around and tax
us to death, regulate us to death, or for that matter sent hired thugs to kill us when we oppose
their wishes.
No military?
One of the attractive potential implications of such a system would be that we might not even
need a military to protect the country. Any threatening or abusive foreign leader would be
subject to the same contribution/assassination/reward system, and it would operate just as
effectively over borders as it does domestically.
This country has learned, in numerous examples subsequent to many wars, that once the
political disputes between leaders has ceased, we (ordinary citizens) are able to get along pretty
well with the citizens of other countries. Classic examples are post-WWII Germany, Japan, and
Italy, and post-Soviet Russia, the Eastern bloc, Albania, and many others.
Contrary examples are those in which the political dispute remains, such as North Korea,
Vietnam, Iraq, Cuba, Red China, and a few others. In all of these examples, the opposing
leadership was NOT defeated, either in war or in an internal power struggle. Clearly, it is not
the PEOPLE who maintain the dispute, but the leadership.
Consider how history might have changed if we'd been able to "bump off" Lenin, Stalin, Hitler,
Mussolini, Tojo, Kim Il Sung, Ho Chi Minh, Ayatollah Khomeini, Saddam Hussein, Moammar
Khadafi, and various others, along with all of their replacements if necessary, all for a measly
few million dollars, rather than the billions of dollars and millions of lives that subsequent wars
cost.
But that raises an interesting question, with an even more interesting answer. "If all this is so
easy, why hasn't this been done before?" I mean, wars are destructive, costly, and dangerous, so
why hasn't some smart politician figured out that instead of fighting the entire country, we could
just 'zero' the few bad guys on the top?
The answer is quite revealing, and strikingly "logical": If we can kill THEIR leaders, they can
kill OUR leaders too. That would avoid the war, but the leadership on both sides would be dead,
and guess who is making the decisions about what to do? That's right, the LEADERS!
And the leaders (both theirs and ours!) would rather see 30,000,000 ordinary people die in
WWII than lose their own lives, if they can get away with it. Same in Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf
War, and numerous other disputes around the globe. You can see that as long as we continue to
allow leaders, both "ours" and "theirs," to decide who should die, they will ALWAYS choose
the ordinary people of each country.
One reason the leaders have been able to avoid this solution is simple: While it's comparatively
easy to "get away with murder," it's a lot harder to reward the person who does it, and that
person is definitely taking a serious risk. (Most murders are solved based on some prior
relationship between the murder and victim, or observations of witnesses who know either the
murderer or the victim.)
Historically, it has been essentially impossible to adequately motivate an assassin, ensuring his
safety and anonymity as well, if only because it has been impossible to PAY him in a form that
nobody can trace, and to ensure the silence of all potential witnesses. Even if a person was
willing to die in the act, he would want to know that the people he chooses would get the
reward, but if they themselves were identified they'd be targets of revenge.
All that's changed with the advent of public-key encryption and digital cash. Now, it should be
possible to announce a standing offer to all comers that a large sum of digital cash will be sent
to him in an untraceable fashion should he meet certain "conditions," conditions which don't
even have to include proving (or, for that matter, even claiming) that he was somehow
responsible for a death.
I believe that such a system has tremendous implications for the future of freedom. Libertarians
in particular (and I'm a libertarian) should pay particular attention to the fact that this system
"encourages" if not an anarchist outcome, at least a minarchist (minimal government) system,
because no large governmental structure could survive in its current form.
In fact, I would argue that this system would solve a potential problem, occasionally postulated,
with the adoption of libertarianism in one country, surrounded by non-libertarian states. It could
have reasonably been suspected that in a gradual shift to a libertarian political and economic
system, remnants of a non-libertarian system such as a military would have to survive, to
protect society against the threats represented by foreign states. While certainly plausible, it
would have been hard for an average naive person to imagine how the country would maintain a
$250 billion military budget, based on voluntary contributions.
The easy answer, of course, is that military budgets of that size would simply not happen in a
libertarian society. More problematic is the question of how a country would defend itself, if it
had to raise its defenses by voluntary contribution. An equally simplistic answer is that this
country could probably be defended just fine on a budget 1/2 to 1/3 of the current budget. True,
but that misses the point.
The real answer is even simpler. Large armies are only necessary to fight the other large armies

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