16.16.1. Note: This is a sufficiently important topic that it deserves
its own heading. There's material on this scattered around
this document, material I'll collect together when I get a
chance.
16.16.2. This topic came up several times on then Extropians mailing
list, where David Friedman (author of "The Machinery of
Freedom" and son of Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman) and
Robin Hanson debated this with me.
16.16.3. Doug Cutrell summarized the concerns of many when he wrote:
- "...the availability of truly secure anonymity, strong
encryption, and untraceable digital cash could allow
contract killing to be an openly conducted business. For
example, an anonymous news post announces a public key
which is to be used to encode a contract kill order, along
with a digital cash payment. The person placing the
contract need only anonymously place the encrypted message
in alt.test. Perhaps it is even possible to make it
impossible to tell that the message was encrypted with the
contract killer's public key (the killer would have to
attempt decryption of all similarly encoded messages on
alt.test, but that might be quite feasible). Thus it could
be completely risk free for anyone to place a contract on
anyone else." [Doug Cutrell, 1994-09-09]
16.16.4. Abhorrent markets
- contract killings
- can collect money anonymously to have someone
whacked...nearly anyone who is controversial can generate
enough "contributions"
- kidnapping, extortion
16.16.5. Dealing with Such Things:
+ never link physical ID with pseudonyms! (they won't kill
you if they don't know who you are)
- and even if one pseudonym is linked, make sure your
financial records are not linkable
- trust no one
- increased physical security...make the effort of killing
much more potentially dangerous
- flooding attacks..tell extortionists to "get in line"
behind all the other extortionists
+ announce to world that one does not pay extortionists...set
up protocol to ensure this
- yes, some will die as a result of this
- console yourself with the fact that though some may die,
fewer are dying as a result of state-sponsored wars and
terrorism (historically a bigger killer than contract
killings!)
By Tim May, see README
HTML by Jonathan Rochkind