Bounty hunters would still be subordinate to law enforcement in this hypothetical scheme, because a bounty submission still has to get approved by somebody insi

Bounty hunters would still be subordinate to law enforcement in this hypothetical scheme, because a bounty submission still has to get approved by somebody inside the appropriate regulatory body. If a corrupt regulatory body wants to protect certain individuals for certain reasons, they can still do that in this system. Note also that the scheme I'm imagining doesn't give bounty hunters any special powers; we're not deputizing people to kick in doors. For example, my understanding of TFA is that the journalist built their cases through public information. The only exception was using their journalist credentials to get access to a "museum" -- but in that case, simply being repeatedly denied seems like sufficient evidence that it's not a museum open to the public, so being a journalist wasn't necessary to the case anyway. It's more plausible to me that a regulatory agency might be too proud to use this kind of help. I have no special knowledge of the IRS, maybe they're in that category.