From: TJHARDIN@delphi.com
Date: Wed, 21 Sep 94 03:18:34 PDT
To: doug@OpenMind.com
Subject: Re: Virtual Assassins & lethal remailers
Message-ID: <01HHD47DO37W9AZM17@delphi.com>
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Subject: Re: Virtual assasins and lethal remailers

(Doug Cutrell) doug@OpenMind.com writes
>>TJHARDIN@delphi.com writes:

>>Adam is absolutely right.... Even if a killer is so anonymous that she
can't
>>be linked to a given crime by the employer who will talk  99.9% of the time
>>any pressure is applied, she must still continue to accept various
>>contracts.
>>The police would then set up one of their stings & "hire" her anonymously
>>for another job & snatch the killer up when she attempts to fullfill this
>>contract. Likewise, the very first offer of employment may well be of this
>>sort.

>Once again (and hopefully for the last time!), I reiterate that it is the
>person *placing* the contract who is at zero risk (except for the risk of
>losing their digital cash).  Stings can be set up to catch the killer, but
>providing the person doing the hiring trusts no one but himself, there is
>no risk to him.  To the extent that there is *any* risk to this person, the
>goals of crypto anarchy have not been met.  This pertains to every
>conceivable security leak that might affect the person placing the
>contract.

>Doug

Sorry to have to repost on this, I only meant to make a brief point. 
To the following --> 

>the person *placing* the contract... is at zero risk 

To this entire point I must say
Au Contraire!The person at greatest risk *is* the person placing the
contract. This is the employer whom I said would fold under pressure 
99.9% of the time. If the police are still around,they will use the classic 
investigatory method of cui bono? Who benefits? Who has motive?This was Adam's 
point & the one I was emphasizing. Even if the payment is untraceable, 
the police have often succeeded in bluffing suspects into confessing to
crimes for which strong suspicions existed, but evidence proving guilt was 
entirely lacking. This will not change as human nature will not fundamentally
change.

As far as the assassin being unable to link the employer to the crime, or know
who hired her, this is fine in theory, but it is likely that she two will ask
the same question regarding the job, cui bono? & coming to the same conclusion.
When arrested later for some other offense, merely providing law enforcement with
the time, place, victim, & payment for various jobs will be enough to convict or
scare most employers into confessing. After all the impatient heir will no longer
be able to claim that Uncle Scrooge was a tragic victim of random violence.

Now I know the idea is to reach a state where police forces no longer exist. But
let's be realistic. -Publicly Supported- morality or Political Correctness Cheka's
such as we know today will hopefully cease to exist, but it is extremely likely that
Private Police squads will be hired by individuals & groups for protection & revenge.
Such units/individuals have a long history in this country, & I knew (verrry casually-
we frequented the same Houston New Wave hangout, Rudyard's in the early 80's) a hired
killer named David West who was tripped up by a femme fatale hired by a private dick
named Clyde Wilson who was hired by the victims' other daughters to get at the daughter
who arranged their parents' murders. The case was solved entirely by these private cops
& only turned over to HPD for arrest & prosecution. I am sure that if no HPD or State
of Texas existed, the "good" daughters would have paid Clyde Wilson for more than just
investigation. Actually, the natural condition of humans in anything more complicated
than a small scale subsistence bands seems to be not living under powerful states, but
rather private armies, condottieri, vendettas, etc. This was the state of affairs in
the Italian Renaisance & which one of us would choose the deadly dull certainties of
the Middle Age's dogmatic fideism over the brilliant explosion of that great liberation
of the human spirit & potential? No one reads Aquin-ass- anymore or even knows who he was
but the Borgias, Machiavelli, & Michelangelo are still remembered, read with profit, &
restored...respectively even now.

tjh 2.61 available