From: Kalkor (kalkor@kalkor.com)
Date: Tue Jul 29 2003 - 11:29:30 MDT
charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Priority: 3 (Normal)
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook CWS, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0)
Importance: Normal
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2727.1300
Sender: owner-virus@lucifer.com
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: virus@lucifer.com
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-729threatbet,0,27334
21.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines
The little-publicized Pentagon plan envisioned a potential futures trading
market in which speculators would wager on the Internet on the likelihood of
a future terrorist attack or assassination attempt on a particular leader. A
Web site promoting the plan already is available.
...
A graphic on the market's Web page Monday showed hypothetical futures
contracts in which investors could trade on the likelihood that Palestinian
leader Yasser Arafat would be assassinated or Jordanian King Abdullah II
would be overthrown.
...
``Can you imagine if another country set up a betting parlor so that people
could go in ... and bet on the assassination of an American political figure
or the overthrow of this institution or that institution?'' he said.
...
Trading is to begin Oct. 1. The market would initially be limited to 1,000
traders, increasing to at least 10,000 by Jan. 1. The Web site says
government agencies will not be allowed to participate and will not have
access to the identities or funds of traders.
...
Wyden said $600,000 has been spent on the program so far and the Pentagon
plans to spend an additional $149,000 this year. The Pentagon has requested
$3 million for the program for next year and $5 million for the following
year.
<Kalkor>
The man who wrote the following story is from my hometown, and has been in
and out of prison for such horrible crimes as "using false social security
numbers" and "interfering with IRS agents". Everytime they let him out, and
begin to surveil him, he in turn surveils the agents and they arrest him for
doing this.
Assassination Politics
by Jim Bell
(3 April 1997?)
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.
[HUGE SNIP]
--- To unsubscribe from the Virus list go to <http://www.lucifer.com/cgi-bin/virus-l>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jul 30 2003 - 09:46:32 MDT