FC: Unholy mix of encryption, anonymity, and digital cash

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

More on Jim Bell...

*******

Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2000 01:48:43 EDT
From: Steve Middlebrook <STM () AOL COM>
Subject: unholy mix of encryption, anonymity, and digital cash

In a message dated 4/14/00 7:59:59 PM, declan () WIRED COM writes:

>    It's an unholy mix of encryption, anonymity, and digital cash to bring
>    about the ultimate annihilation of all forms of government. The
>    system, which Bell spent years talking up online, uses digital cash
>    and anonymity to predict and confirm assassinations.

I don't know whether this makes good political theory or religion, but I bet
you could sell it to Fox as the outline of new one hour drama to take the
place of Party of Five.  The hero and heroine could meet at the anti-World
Bank protests here in Washington and learn that each other is secretly
carrying a Palm Pilot in their backpack.  Instantly identified by each other
as techies surround by anti-techies, they bond and fall in love.  They get
married on the spot in front of the trashed GAP store on Connecticut Ave.
Over the course of the next few days of protesting, they pick up a couple of
misfit college age kid each of which has  specialized knowledge relevant to
the assassination business (who's the leader of Fiji and what exactly does he
look like -- how far can a .44 caliber bullet travel and still maintain the
momentum necessary to pierce a human skull).  Each week our merry (and highly
attractive and sexy) band of anti-capitalist freedom fighter will travel to a
new exotic local where they will predict and confirm  assassinations
(whatever that means -- sounds like advise and consent of the Senate? -- this
one plot point we still have to work out)

Part of the tension of the show is that our freedom fighters would not know
who is directing them or paying for these lavish trips.  In the season
finale, the group returns home to confront the boss and learn his identity,
only to find out it's Alan Greenspan hiding behind a curtain. (or was
it??????)

stm

*********


> Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2000 14:18:41 -0600
> From: Paul Fenimore <fenimore () roadrunner com>
> To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
> Subject: Re: FC: Crypto-convict won't recant: Jim Bell gets out of prison 
> today
> Reply-To: Paul Fenimore <fenimore () roadrunner com>
> X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0.1i
>
> The one angle that seems to be missing from this article is that
> regardless of the purpose to which Jim Bell wants to harness this
> market in murder-for-hire, the market will exand to fill all niches,
> not just the people Bell loves to hate.
>
> The murder-market principle applies equally well to all of society.
> He is proposing the capitalistic analog of a "society" where
> revenge killings, honor killings, etc. are legal.
>
> On Fri, Apr 14, 2000 at 12:13:39PM -0400, Declan McCullagh wrote:
> [ ... ]
> >     The retribution he has in mind? Well, it's decidedly not simple
> >     thuggery or wild-eyed ranting.
>
> He wants to organize a retail market in thuggery.
>
> Thug, n: [Hind. thag, swindler (euphemism)]; ...
>  1. a member of of a former religious orgranization of India who murdered
>  and robbed in the service of Kali, a god of destruction.
>  2. Any assassin, cutthroat, or ruffian.
> -- Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, 2nd Ed., (1983).
>
> >     Before he was arrested, the MIT graduate even gave his scheme a catchy
> >     title: "Assassination Politics."
>
> Assassination Economics would better nomeclature.
>
> >     It's an unholy mix of encryption, anonymity, and digital cash to bring
>
> Immoral is more accurate than unholy.
>
> >     about the ultimate annihilation of all forms of government. The
>
> Actually, I'd say it is the establishment of gangster-capitalism, if
> one's on the look-out for catchy names.
>
> Sincerely,
> Paul

*********

Background:

http://jya.com/jimbell.htm
IRS raids a cypherpunk
by Declan McCullagh   April 3, 1997

     Jim Bell's first mistake was publishing an essay describing how 
disgruntled citizens could kill off Federal
government agents by using anonymous betting pools and digital cash. His 
second mistake was informing the
IRS that the agency had no legal authority to tax him.

     About twenty armed IRS agents and other Federal police swarmed into 
Bell's home in Washington state
on Tuesday morning, hunting for evidence that Bell's "Assassination 
Politics" essay had come to fruition. They
expropriated Bell's three computer systems, two guns and even a solitary 
mouse cable. The Feds were taking
no chances: Since Bell's voluminous Net postings mentioned tax collectors, 
agents from the BATF, FBI,
DEA, and local police forces joined the raid.

     The case is another like that of Jake Baker, the University of 
Michigan student who posted fantasies about
raping and killing a classmate. A Federal judge eventually threw out the 
charges, ruling Baker never intended
to act and the tale was "only a rather savage and tasteless piece of 
fiction." But was Jim Bell just fantasizing,
or inciting violence? Did he intend to take real-world steps to erase some 
Feds, or were his posts just
megabytes of bone-chilling blather? The IRS says it has evidence of Bell's 
lethal intent, but some netizens who
know Bell say he's just a harmless loon. (EFF's Stanton McCandlish adds 
that the agents should have copied
Bell's files instead of grabbing the computers: "If the seized party 
happens to be a publisher of any sort,
seizing the machine might be a violation of the law.")

     The raid stemmed from a six-month tussle between Bell and the IRS, 
which began in November 1996
when the 38-year old computer engineer demanded a hefty tax refund and 
threatened to convene his own
"common-law court" if it was refused. That grabbed the Feds' attention. (So 
did the actions of the
"Multnomah County Common Law Court," which apparently met in January to 
convict IRS agents and
Attorney General Janet Reno of "theft by deception.") In February, IRS 
agents seized Bell's 1986 Honda as
payment for back taxes -- and found inside it a printout of his 
"Assassination Politics" essay. "I think they
overreacted. I think they got a copy of the essay without knowing what it 
meant," Bell says. "They have
inadvertently given my idea a lot more publicity than it would have 
received otherwise. The only silver lining I
can see is the publicity -- I couldn't purchase it if I tried."

     His scheme was simple and, Bell claimed, legal. In it, anyone 
interested in seeing a "government miscreant"
dead (IRS agents were oft-mentioned targets) would contribute anonymously 
to a betting pool. The person,
presumably the assassin, who correctly guessed the victim's time of death 
wins the pool of digital cash. Bell
writes: "An organization could quite legally operate, assisted by 
encryption, international data networking, and
untraceable digital cash, in a way that would (indirectly) hasten the death 
of named people, for instance hated
government employees and officeholders."

     Bell has spent nearly two years attempting to promote his screeds on 
Usenet newsgroups and mailing lists
including libernet and cypherpunks. Christmas Eve last year found Bell once 
again in front of his computer in
his parents' Vancouver, Washington home, railing against lawyers, police -- 
and most of all, the IRS.
Responding to a post about IRS agents seizing $27,000 from a man who won it 
in a football pool, Bell typed:
"This kind of stunt fully justifies whatever level of lethal punishment 
that the public will one day direct at these
thugs."

     I remember the reaction on the cypherpunks list to Bell's writings: 
swift, critical, angry. Even the
cypherpunk founders who popularized anonymous remailers and clandestine 
markets in digital information
were appalled. One veteran 'punk told me that "Bell crossed the line. It 
crossed over into the realm where the
courts can go."

     And it was, ultimately, a Federal magistrate who signed the search 
warrant on 9:02 am on March 28 at
the request of the IRS. Jeffrey Gordon, an inspector in the IRS' Internal 
Security Division, details in an
10-page affidavit how he traced Bell's use of allegedly fraudulent Social 
Security Numbers, how he learned
that Bell had been arrested in 1989 for "manufacturing a controlled 
substance," how he found out that Bell
possessed the home addresses of a handful of IRS agents. Gordon's 
conclusion: Bell planned "to overthrow
the government." The IRS investigator says in his affidavit that Bell's 
"essay details an illegal scheme by Bell
which involves plans to assassinate IRS and other government officals... I 
believe that Bell has begun taking
steps to carry out his Assassination Politics plan."

     Indeed, that's the real question: Did Bell step beyond mailing list 
posturing to actual planning? The
Supreme Court has ruled that speech can be suppressed only if it is 
intended, and is likely to produce,
"imminent lawless action." Since Bell's manuscripts have drifted around the 
dusty corners of cyberspace for
years -- to no discernible effect -- a prosecutor might be hard-pressed to 
prove they're dangerous. Eric
Freedman, a constitutional law professor at Hofstra Law School, says that 
Bell's writings are protected by
the First Amendment. The Supreme Court's legal test "is not going to be met 
where someone writes a
speculative essay about what the world would be like if such a system were 
in place," he says.

     No charges have been filed. "That's still in the investigative 
stages. I can't comment on anything when an
investigation is in progress," said Kate Greenquist, a spokeswoman for the 
U.S. Attorney's office.

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