Assassination Politics
by Jim Bell.
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 "unblinding" 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.