On Thu, 14 Nov 2002, Keith Ray wrote: > It's been a number of years since Jim Bell wrote his infamous > "Assassination Politics" essay. If someone were to try to implement > the system today and not share Jim Bell's fate, they would need > absolute anonymity and security. The technical requirements for > implementing the system are: > > 1. Anonymous and secure communication between the organization and the > contributors and guessors. > > 2. Anonymous payment system. > > 3. Anonymous public presense of the organization to solicit > contributions and display bounties to potential assassins. > > At the time AP was written, only the first requirement could have been > met using the mixmaster remailer network. The last two requirements > were not yet available.
Not true. Usenet is a fine forum for anonymous discussion. See Blacknet. > However, two new systems, DMT and Freenet, > could be used to meet the anonymous payment and anonymous public > presense requirements. Freenet is irrelevant. As for the DMT Rand, and assuming it is a viable currency, the question should be "will there be a large enough anonymity set to make this practical." That has always been a problem with this scheme. Even if anonymous digital cash is available, if the number of users is below a threshold limit there will be no actual anonymity gained. (Oh, and there is still the messy issue of the wetwork involved. Someone still needs to get out there and whack the poor git.) > If someone did want to implement AP, would DMT/Yodel, Freenet, and > Mixmaster be good enough to keep the TLA's from shutting the system > down? That is an entirely different question. The answer is no -- if Mixmaster were regularly used as a key component in an assassination market, running Mixmaster would become illegal. Those remailer operators who would persist in running Mixmaster would be jailed or disappeared. Or the Rand could be attacked, and use of non-government currency could be made illegal. If you are reduced to an anonymity set of "fellow criminals", it doesn't matter if your individual crime is not known. If use or possession of the Rand is a crime, you're shit out of luck. AP as presented is unworkable. It is amusing that the IRS so got its panties bunched over such an impractical scheme. (Oh, btw -- expect an audit, Keith, if you are unfortunate enough to be a US taxpayer.) If one wanted to do a cyberspace assassination market, it could be done without anonymous digital cash, assuming there was some degree of financial trust between the players. (Negotiation of price and target can be done using Mixmaster, PGP encryption, and Usenet. Payment can be rendered via an anonymous numbered offshore bank account accessible by anyone who has the number/password combination. The buyer provides this information to the seller after the hit, or perhaps splits the payment across two accounts and does a "half now, half on delivery" system. Insert standard reputation capital system ideas here, wherein certain buyers and sellers are known to be reliable, and have persistent nyms because of PGP signatures. This is nothing new -- Blacknet demonstrated this could be done with information. It is a small step to extend the black market brokering to meatspace deeds. -MW-
