8 ms·

Assassination Politics (1997)

39 points by kilroy123 13y ago

rdl 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    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 13y ago
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 13y ago
  I wasn't familiar with this, but Wikipedia knows of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Bell 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 13y ago
    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/a-ceo-who-resisted-nsa-spying-is-out-of-prison-and-he-feels-vindicated-by-snowden-leaks/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/09/30... )
andyzweb 13y ago
another cryptome/internet classic
cryptome 13y ago
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/ http://cpunks.org/pipermail/cypherpunks/ Subscribe to cpunks: https://cpunks.org/mailman/listinfo/cypherpunks 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 https://twitter.com/pro2rat Neither are interested in remaining anonymous.
- anthonyb 13y ago
  Not just AP, but nuking people you don't like, too: https://twitter.com/pro2rat/status/389410900832038912 https://twitter.com/pro2rat/status/389410900832038912
  - triplesec 13y ago
    This is the biggest issue with AP. Where down the line you stop, in assassinating leaders? With what criteria?
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
dmix 13y ago
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-EmpowerWhistleblowers-ebook/dp/B007HUD7LU/ 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 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/0465097200/ 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.
aidenn0 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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.
  - krapp 13y ago
    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 13y ago
      "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 13y ago
        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...
  - msandford 13y ago
    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.
sanjuro 13y ago
I'm actually attempting to start such a market. Here's a link: http://assmkedzgorodn7o.onion/ http://assmkedzgorodn7o.onion/ If you don't have Tor installed you can also access the site by adding .to: http://assmkedzgorodn7o.onion.to/ http://assmkedzgorodn7o.onion.to/
- techdragon 13y ago
  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.

39 points by kilroy123 13y ago

rdl 13y ago

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 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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 13y ago

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 13y ago
I wasn't familiar with this, but Wikipedia knows of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Bell 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 13y ago
  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/a-ceo-who-resisted-nsa-spying-is-out-of-prison-and-he-feels-vindicated-by-snowden-leaks/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/09/30... )

andyzweb 13y ago

another cryptome/internet classic

cryptome 13y ago

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/ http://cpunks.org/pipermail/cypherpunks/ Subscribe to cpunks: https://cpunks.org/mailman/listinfo/cypherpunks 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 https://twitter.com/pro2rat Neither are interested in remaining anonymous.

anthonyb 13y ago
Not just AP, but nuking people you don't like, too: https://twitter.com/pro2rat/status/389410900832038912 https://twitter.com/pro2rat/status/389410900832038912
- triplesec 13y ago
  This is the biggest issue with AP. Where down the line you stop, in assassinating leaders? With what criteria?
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]

dmix 13y ago

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-EmpowerWhistleblowers-ebook/dp/B007HUD7LU/ 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 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/0465097200/ 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.

aidenn0 13y ago

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 13y ago
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.
- krapp 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    "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 13y ago
      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...
- msandford 13y ago
  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.

sanjuro 13y ago

I'm actually attempting to start such a market. Here's a link: http://assmkedzgorodn7o.onion/ http://assmkedzgorodn7o.onion/ If you don't have Tor installed you can also access the site by adding .to: http://assmkedzgorodn7o.onion.to/ http://assmkedzgorodn7o.onion.to/

techdragon 13y ago
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.