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OoO=o=oOO=o=O=OoO=o=oOO=o=O=OoO=o=oOO=o=O=>
OoO=o=oOO=o=O=OoO=o=oOO=o=O=OoO=o=oOO=o=O=>
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: -`- -`- OoO=o=oOO=o=O=>
; _|_--oOO--(_)--OOo--_|_ OoO=oOO==OoO=o=oOO=o=O=>
| ¡ K-1ine Zine ! | OoO=o=oOO=o=O=>
! issue 19, volume 9 ¡ OoO=o=oOO=o=O=OoO=o=oOO=o=O=>
---------O^O---- OoO=o=oOO=o=O=OoO=o=oOO=o=O=>
;. |__|__| OoO=o=oOKill=o=OYourOoO=o=PresidentoOO=o=O=OoO=o=oOO=o=O=>
|| || OoO=o=oOO=o=O=OoO=o=oOO=o=O=OoO=o=oOO=o=O=>
ooO Ooo OoO=o=oOO=o=O= OoO=o=oOO=o=O=OoO=o=oOO=o=O=>
OoO=o=oOO=o=O=OoO=o=oOO=o=O=KillO=o=ooOThe=o=PeopleOoO=o=>
;`-.> September 2001 <=o=O=o=O=o=O
'The Hypervivid Dreamstates'
"Paranoia is a social disease--
you get it from screwing other people."
_____________________________________________________________________________
» .- Words from the Editor -. « |
*: [-] Introduction .......................................... The Clone :*
*: (-) Contact Information ................................... The Clone :*
*: (-) Affiliate Web-Links ................................... Nettwerked :*
*: (-) Advertisment .......................................... HackerSalvage:*
*: (-) Advertisment .......................................... FlipperSmack :*
*: (-) Link of the Month ..................................... The Clone :*
*: (-) K-1ine Mirrors ........................................ The Clone :*
*: (-) Nettwerked Movie Mirrors .............................. Nettwerked :*
*: (-) Nettwerked: Cyberpunk Books ........................... Nettwerked :*
____________________________________________________________________________
» .- Documents -. « |
*: (x) 'Exploiting The "Sophisticated Circuits" PowerKey Pro' Phlux :*
*: (x) 'The Story Of The Centurion' .......................... Phlux :*
*: (x) 'restricted.txt' ...................................... Phlux :*
*: (x) 'Canadian Packet Switching Networks' .................. The Clone :*
*: (x) 'DRUGS TESTED BY THE CIA' ............................. Anonymous :*
*: (x) 'Assassination Politics' .............................. Jim Bell :*
_____________________________________________________________________________
» .- Conclusion -. « |
*: [-] Credits ............................................... The Clone :*
*: [-] Shouts ................................................ The Clone :*
_____________________________________________________________________________
Introduction -
Welcome to another addition of K-1ine 'zine. This month I have a nice bunch
of files for you all - lots of interesting information for your intake.
Sorry about the lateness of this issue... I've been very busy - enjoy!
-->
Contact Information;
=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=
Comments/Questions/Submissions: theclone@hackcanada.com
On IRC: irc.2600.net - #hackcanada, #cpu (key)
Check out my site: (Nettwerked) http://www.nettwerked.net
-->
=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=
Affiliate Web-Links:
=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=
CPU http://www.nettwerked.net/cpu *
Damage Incorporated http://www.freeyellow.com/members6/damage-inc/index.html
Grass Hopper Unit http://www.ghu.ca
Hack Canada http://www.hackcanada.com
H410G3N-dot-com http://www.h410g3n.com
Phreak BC http://www.phreakbc.com
PyroFreak http://www.multimania.com/pyrozine/index.html
* = featured sites of Nettwerked Incorporated
--
-- Advertisment --
+++ WWW.HACKERSALVAGE.COM +++
HackerSalvage.com is a non-profit website dedicated to
keeping old hardware in circulation. Many of us have
piles of it sitting around but can't just toss it out.
Here you can post computer items for sale or post a
want ad for items you are looking for. A perfect place
to get rid of perfectly good junk.... and get some new
stuff to rebuild the pile.
+++ +++
--
Flippersmack AD -
"Flippersmack is a culturemag for a penguin generation. What does this
mean? Articles and reviews from your favorite writers. The low-down on
what's fresh in tech, comics, movies, and music. Wrapped in a style all
its own."
"We will strive to release Flippersmack every week; a taste of insanity to
inspire, inform, and entertain. From the creators of System Failure and
Avalanche, there's a new zine out on the net: FLIPPERSMACK!"
You can read the first fourteen issues at:
http://www.nettwerked.net/flippersmack001.txt
http://www.nettwerked.net/flippersmack002.txt
http://www.nettwerked.net/flippersmack003.txt
http://www.nettwerked.net/flippersmack004.txt
http://www.nettwerked.net/flippersmack005.txt
http://www.nettwerked.net/flippersmack006.txt
http://www.nettwerked.net/flippersmack007.txt
http://www.nettwerked.net/flippersmack008.txt
http://www.nettwerked.net/flippersmack009.txt
http://www.nettwerked.net/flippersmack010.txt
http://www.nettwerked.net/flippersmack011.txt
http://www.nettwerked.net/flippersmack012.txt
http://www.nettwerked.net/flippersmack013.txt
http://www.nettwerked.net/flippersmack014.txt
http://www.nettwerked.net/flippersmack015.txt
http://www.nettwerked.net/flippersmack016.txt
http://www.nettwerked.net/flippersmack017.txt
http://www.nettwerked.net/flippersmack018.txt
--
--=[ LINK OF THE MONTH ]=--
Every month I post one really great "link of the month" on every issue
of K-1ine magazine. The link can be anything in the technology industry,
music scene, rave scene, punk scene, or even a good article you read on a
news site. I'll be taking submissions via e-mail or IRC right away;
so get your links in and maybe you'll see it in the next issue of K-1ine!
For the month of September, the link of the month is:
http://www.monkeyvsrobot.com/~erik/
Just... uhm, well it doesn't make sense...
[submitted by: The Clone]
--
K-1ine Mirrors:
http://the.wiretapped.net/security/info/textfiles/k1ine/
"Wiretapped.net is an Australian site offering an archive of open
source software, informational and advisory textfiles and radio/conference
broadcasts covering the areas of network security, network operations,
host integrity, cryptography and privacy. We aim to become the largest
archive of this nature in the Asia/Pacific region through steady growth
of our archives and regular updates to them (most updated nightly).
We are proudly telehoused on a 10Mbit/sec connection by Connect.com.au using
OneGuard hardware donated by eSec Limited. The archive, along with its
sister site on the same machine, The AusMac Archive, generates between 10
and 60 gigabytes of outbound traffic daily. Wiretapped.net is hosted in
Sydney, Australia."
--
Def Con 9 coverage for 'Nettwerked: The Movie' is now online!
Please download from the following mirrors:
Disclaimer: If you're under 18, don't watch this video.
Contains scenes of nudity and drunkin' hackers 'n' phreakers acting silly.
* Mirror #1: http://lumo.eghetto.ca/~theclone/defcon9.wmv
(the_p0pe's server, Nova Scotia, Canada, 4Mbps)
* Mirror #2: http://www.pstis.com/defcon9.wmv (h410g3n's server,
Edmonton, Canada, 4Mbps)
* Mirror #3: http://www.h410g3n.com/defcon9.wmv (h410g3n's
server, Leduc, Canada, 4Mbps)
* Mirror #4: http://www.plappy.com/defcon.wmv (Plappy's server,
Edmonton, Canada, 2Mbps)
* Mirror #5: http://the.wiretapped.net/multimedia/defcon9.wmv
(Wiretapped.net server, Sydney, Australia, 10Mbps)
* Mirror #6: http://sniperwolf.powersurfr.com/~theclone/defcon9.wmv
(son4r's server, Edmonton, Canada, 2Mbps)
* Mirror #7: http://www.nurotek.net/linux/media/defcon9.wmv
(Nurotek Networks server, California, USA, via two 45Mbps pipes)
Help mirror my video!
32.1MB's, 103 kb's / sec, 43:36 minutes, Windows Media Format;
MPEG-4. Send all new mirror URLs to: theclone@hackcanada.com
--
Nettwerked: Cyberpunk Books
'1984', George Orwell
http://www.nettwerked.net/1984.zip
'Brave New World', Aldous Huxley
http://www.nettwerked.net/brave.zip
'City of Bits: Space, Place, And The Infobahn', William J. Mitchell
http://www.nettwerked.net/bits.zip
'Cyberpunk In The Nineties', Bruce Sterling
http://www.nettwerked.net/cyberpunk.zip
'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?', Phillip K. Dick
http://www.nettwerked.net/androids.zip
'FLUX -- Tales of Human Futures', Orson Scott Card
http://www.nettwerked.net/flux.zip
'Neuromancer', William Gibson
http://www.nettwerked.net/neuromancer.zip
'The Quest For Extraterrestrial Intellience', Carl Sagan
http://www.nettwerked.net/quest.zip
'Underground', Julian Assange
http://www.nettwerked.net/underground.zip
---
======================================================
=Exploiting The "Sophisticated Circuits" PowerKey Pro=
=(models 200+600) By phlux phlux@fucktelus.com======
======================9/10/2001=======================
======================================================
----------------------------------------------------
-Introduction---------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------
The Sophisticated circuits PowerKey product line up is
targeted at power mac users. The PowerKey 200 and
600 are "smart" multioutlet power strips. Oddly only
the model 200 has surge protection.
The power strip has 6 outlets, 5 of which whos on off
states are toggleable. The 6th outlet is always on,
intended for a Mac with "soft power".
Another feature is what Sophisticated Circuits calls
"Phone Ring Power Control; PowerKey can be connected
to any analog phone line. You can create events to to
turn on your system after any desired number of phone
rings. You can also shut the computer down when your
fax or remote session is finished."
This product is intended for Mac OS based computers
with the ADB port.
NOTE: This is more so an advisory then an EXPLOIT.
But because of the nature, you can take it
however. Just wanted the information to be
out there.
----------------------------------------------------
-Exploiting-----------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------
The "Phone Ring Power Control" is basically an RJ-11
adapter built into the power strip. The user can
program this feature to toggle the outlets. In the
included software, the user specifies number of rings
for the Phone Ring Power Control to answer.
Distinctive ring is also supported.
The user then specifies an 8 digit code. PowerKey
listens for the DTMF code when the phone is off hook,
either by an answering machine or the powerkey itself.
A phone on the same line as the PowerKey can be used.
Exploitation is obviously very simple.
The manual uses the code 4242# to activate a trigger
(which can turn on/off/restart the computer, the modem
or anything connected to the outlet :)
In a review of the product, one users codes were:
1# Power CPU
2# Restart CPU
3# Disconnect Power to outlet #2, and then Reconnect
42#3 Toggle Modem
The manual suggests using the * and # keys in the code
so that normal dialing will not trigger a programmed
event.
So if your new neighbor is a mac user and you eye his
"PowerKey" power strip, it is very easy to control
his computer.
-Write a simple program to scan for the code. When a
correct code is keyed in, a beep is heard, if the
wrong code is keyed, you must wait atleast 2 seconds.
Basic configuration may allow for an event to be
toggled just by phoning the line the ProKey is hooked
to and waiting for the set amount of rings.
ProKey answers after X amount of rings, answers, and
the programmed fucntion is activated. ProKey
will hang up after a given amount fo time without
any DTMF activity, this option can be configured.
I believe default is 25 seconds for the correct
control code to be detected before the line is
released.
Unfortunately I don't have the frequency or duration
of the confirmation beep, but this task is still not
very difficult. Have a laptop and a program prepared,
goto victims house, connect your laptop TNI style.
Have your modem pick up the line, then run your
program to start scanning codes, try the ones I
suggested, and then try predicatable ones ending with
with * or #.
The maximum time to score all the users codes can be
calculated with a mathematical equasion.
(If I were a mathematician I would have a number for
you, but because I am a drop out playing with phones
and computers, the math is up to you, or just fuck
the math...)
If the passcode is only 4 digits, there would be
10,000 possible combinations, times a 2 second
interval between combinations, plus maybe a 3 second
delay for every 25 seconds of scanning (ProKey hangs
up, modem goes off hook, and then on hook to skan).
So depending on how fast your modem can transmit
DTMF (look in your modems manual under S-Registers)
Also taking into consideration the duration of the
code, and the timeout for the ProKey to accept a
correct code, i figure if done right you should have
the codes in a day or two with a bit of effort.
Now you can either listen in for the beep while your
laptop scans (or computer, as you can do this remotely.
Try phoning "after hours". Wait for the line to go off
hook and if nobody answers "hello", start cracking)
You can probably do this from home without getting
busted, unless somebody comes home and tries to use a
phone that the ProKey is on. So use a laptop/acoustic
coupler at a payphone.)
NOTE: Because you will be entering a series of DTMF
the telco will try and interpret these as a phone #
and this will affect you hearing the confirmation
beep. Dial a silent number, disconnect the victims
line from the telco(using a 9 volt wired across
the TIP wire to keep the line "open"), or just dial
311 (in telus land this is an ANAC) and after the
recorded message times out the line will be silent.
Have your scanner/modem detect any other tones other
then the standard DTMF digits used to scan, and have
them logged as there will most likely be more then
one code asper the users programmed functions.
-When the user keys in theyre code in your presence,
shoulder surf, or decode the DTMF by ear.
-You could even install a tap in the users TNI so that
whenever the victims line goes off hook, all DTMF
activity is logged, or you could just use a
microcassette recorder with VOX.
The ProKey may need to detect a distinctive ring before
it accepts a passcode(user defined), ask the victim if
he/she has a fax or any other number to get ahold of
them. This information should be very easy to social
engineer from a family member or the telco.
With minutes, hours, or just a day you should have remote
access to the Jones' Mac/or and anything connected to the
outlets/programmed to the ProKey model 200+600.
Im sure you can think of some fun stuff to do, first off
you may want to find out what code does what, look through
theyre window while testing the codes :P look for either the
computer power led/monitor/modem/printer/lamp being turned
on or off. Im sure you can think of many fun things to do.
Think ring supressor.
Or just keep turning on and off the mac so as to burn out
the power supply.
-----------------------------------------------------------
-Conclusion------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------
As technology advances, security is effected.
Be it a simple electronic gadget or a new service offered
by the telco, nothing is perfect. Simple security needs
are being overlooked to save money and a little R&D.
This is wrong.
I will have no problems sleeping at nite because a small
company with a name contradicting its product line can't
implement a bit of security and common sense.
This file could have been summed up in one paragraph that
would allow anyone to burn out some poor Mac users power
supply, down a server, further profit loss by perihpherials
being kept on while away on vacation! Or you could drive
the user insane by installing a remotely toggled
ring supressor (i do not recomend the ProKey, hook this up
in the neighbours TNI with an infrared transciever) now
you can fuck with the user good.
http://www.sophisticated.com/products
Sophisticated circuits? Not really.
-----------------------------------------------------------
-Contact Me/Shouts/The Future------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------
Contact me;
phlux on irc.2600.net #HackCanada #CPU
E-mail phlux@fucktelus.com fraud@verizonmail.com
Please give me your feedback, any corrections, or if you
would like to see a passcode scanner written, maybe I will
do that if there is any interest.
Shouts to;
Lucky225, theclone, my mom, pooly, #CPU, #PPC, #PHREAKS
|iquid, your mom, RFTech, Gizzy, 1-800-BELL-SOUTH
and of course Uncle Ben.
www.open-telco.com The Open Source Telecom Group
www.nettwerked.net Website for the 780 undergr0und
www.nettwerked.net/cpu The Canadian Phreakers Union
www.hackcanada.com HackCanada
home.dal.net/verizown California Organization by Lucky225
In the future I have such projects in the works as;
Fuck_Telus.txt Interesting tidbits and information on telus
and the operators and how to use them.
Thinking up ways to fuck over Bell South
Anyone want to help me scan 780.xxx.xxxx ?
Setting up a "phun house" (TXT)
-------------------------------------------------------------
-SKSK.-------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------------------
--
<nitroburn> i like men in skirts
--
____________________________
The Story Of The Centurion
___________________
As told by phlux;
phlux@fucktelus.com
_______________
Introduction;
This txt will document various experiences I had dealing with one paticular
centurion payphone in my area, along with other information regarding it.
I have compiled it in story form, inspired by theclone and RTs txt of
similar nature. Also i find txts are much more enjoyable when i can read them
in somewhat of a story, in the writers own words. It is in some sense like
i was apart of they're experience, and therefore more interesting rather
then a generic txt giving the 0h day shit, straight up.
If you don't like it, fuck me, and read it anyways, you may learn something.
_____________________________________________________________________________
Our story begins, with phlux in a car, being driven to his new home, in a
small town in 780, Alberta. I am driven a small tour of this small town.
My parents tell me, "there's a bar, post office, an elementary school for
the little ones..."
I interupt them "is their a payphone?" i ask as we drive the by payphone.
"yup... but thats about it"...
I quickly notice that the payphone is a Telus Centurion, the brown box sort.
It is housed in a wall type freestanding booth, offering little housing.
Little did I know what adventures would be had at this phone. Some might
seem of little significance, but theyre all memories. And all memories are
treasured in due time.
Sometime shortly after unpacking, i take a walk to the payphone. Not having
anyone to call, or any money to call anyone, i dial 311, the local telus
ANAC. "7..8..0..X..X..X......" (number ommitted for security reasons)....
I then dial the telus ring back, 570.XXX.XXXX, the sound of the mechanical
bell is somewhat pleasing as i've not heard one in quite sometime, and also
because it sounds somewhat different than standard mechanical ringers, as it
is housed in the thick armoring.
Not knowing what else i could call.. i decided to try the ring back again.
And then again, a few times... one last time i called, and as the phone rung
i walked away. As i turn my back, the phone suprises me... "RIIIINNNNGGGG"
the first ring was prominent as usual, however the second one was moreso a
half ring, with the end of the ring trailing off, it sounded really cool, it
was as though the ringer was dying out. The third ring was very quite, and
much shorter.
I pickup the handset, listened to the test tone, and then proceed to call the
ring back again, flash hooking and looking at the phone, waiting. Right when
i thought i had killed the bell, i hear the slightest tingle of the bell.
It was so quiet, and only partial. I try once more, and this is repeated.
I walk home trying to think what just happened...
I don't visit the payphone until sometime passes. I don't really remember
this time period too well, but I will merge a legit log of a conversation
that took place on irc. Note this log is completely unedited. At this time I
was going through another nick phase, in the log i am obvisouly zur and pooly
being a good friend of mine. Greets to pooly.
fucked phone.txt (the log) created: Sunday, June 04, 2000, 2:35am
*** Now talking in #Marcie
*** ChanServ sets mode: +nt
*** ChanServ sets mode: -o zur
*** ChanServ changes topic to 'MDFMK OWNS YOU!!!!'
*** pooly (ignorethat@216.225.107.217) has joined #marcie
*** ChanServ sets mode: +o pooly
-ChanServ:#marcie- pooly has opped zur
*** ChanServ sets mode: +o zur
<zur> this centurion ive been playin with is totally fucked
<zur> the hopper is all FUCKER
<zur> i make a legit all with coins.. .and the hopper doesnt empty it out
into the cash box
<pooly> it gave ur money bakc
<zur> then if i fuck around with the phone long enough... hitting the hangup
switch.. pressing buttons makin cool tones
<pooly> ?
<zur> it gave more
<zur> yea
<zur> when i fuck around
<zur> it empties the hopper
<pooly> heh
<zur> today i made 70cents
<pooly> that's cool
<zur> a few days ago about 5 bucks
<zur> and
<pooly> i thought about stuffing phones as a job
<zur> if i dial a ring back number... i get a quarter of a ring and its very
faint...
<zur> then nothing
<zur> and i did that 3 times
<zur> come back to it like 45 min later
<zur> it wont do it
<zur> coincidentally the lights to the booth dont work
<zur> i think its got some kinda power problem
<zur> as i recall the op can empty the hopperinto coin return with voltage
modulation
<zur> so maybe when i was fucking around it got a lil surge and interpreted
it as a coin return thinger?
<zur> like a green box?
<pooly> i dunno
<zur> fuck
<zur> i wanna know wtf is goin on
<zur> yea and i was babysitting for this hot bitch and her bra is lyin around
the house and its a DD 36
<zur> but anyways
<zur> she goes
<zur> "dont let the kids stay up past 9:30"
<zur> but like she isnt back yet
<zur> so i dunno if she wanted me to wait for her?
<zur> or just walk home after theyre in bd??
<zur> bed
<zur> any fucking ideas?
<pooly> you should wait
<zur> at her place?
<pooly> maybe she'll give u extra cash
<pooly> ya
<zur> or some fucking head
<zur> hmm
<zur> i dont think that bra was hers
<zur> shes got nice knockers
<zur> but not DD 36
<zur> or whatever
<zur> but head is always nice
<pooly> or she'll let u poke her knockers with weiner
<zur> k i fucking better get back over there.. the fucked payphone is across
the street ne ways
<zur> heh yea tit fucking is some good
<zur> hehe i ill bring all the change that cocksucker gave me
<zur> cya dude
<pooly> heh
*** Disconnected
I remember now, the payphone had emptied its hopper on me more then once.
It would happen when i just fucked around with it, dialing ring backs,INWATS,
maybe an ANAC.. I recall when i would get a VMB or some other DTMF sensitive
automated operator, if i couldn't crack the password or even get to a
password prompt, i would mash the keypad.
In some sense, it didn't suprise me when i would hit 2 keys at the same time
and hear a non DTMF telephone tone, but at the same time it did as the
called partys recording got dimmer.
After fucking around, doing shit like that, when i would press the hookswitch
to release the line, this was when the hopper would empty, also one time
i believe it was when i was dialing the ring back, and i went to hookflash
then the hopper would give me its gold. The sound of multiple coins gushing
through the coin return chute from the hopper was much more enjoyed then the
actual profits.
>From then on, i tried to make regular trips to the payphone, wanting to know
why, what happened, when it happened, knowing it had much to offer.
I recall being somewhat idle in the phreaking scene, in the sense of actually
doing stuff, but i remained active in keeping 'updated' to some degree, and
also maintaining an online presence. I would generally use the payphone
to checkout some numbers i had acquired.
I got dropped docs to a 'private' teleconf, hosted by some familiar people in
the scene, not knowing what it had to offer, i grabbed my skateboarded and
headed to the payphone without thinking twice, opdiverting in, the confrence
wasn't all too interesting.
I sat on the slanted base of the open housing designed to hold the phonebook.
When i stood up, i realized there was a huge fucking spider, using the phones
cover for housing. I hate spiders so i freaked out, i was sitting and this
fucker was a few inches away from my head. I tried to stand on the otherside
of the booth, but the armored cabling connecting the handset was too short.
Still being startled by the spiders mere presence, i booked, also TRON
is a lamer, and not a good host.
Inspite of this, after having gone home, realizing my associate operative
agent would be on the confrence, i skated back to the payphone to call in.
He wasn't in, so i ended up just lurking for a bit, and then i threw the
handset at that fucking spider, fucked up his web good. I hit the hook switch
to save conf time, and skated away, the handset dangling. TRON is a lamer.
Simple experiences like this made my daily interaction with this payphone
somehow imperable. I tried to devise notes of phone numbers to call. Some
were from skans, some i had acquired from friends, or however i got them,
all the interesting ones went on documented.
Finding a pen was one thing, so I found it just as easy to scratch phone
numbers, using a screwdriver on a floppy disk with bad sectors, writing
the digits on cigarette pack tin foil works well with a phillips head.
One time i even wrote a confrence pin # on the side of the actual booth
with a rock, this also worked well. It seemed other people had this idea
aswell.
With these trips, i dialed many numbers, usually collect calls where you
don't have to speak with an operator. Collect calling is a great way to check
out a long distance phone number, assuming it doesn't have a collect block.
However i have never boxed a call from the payphone...
Interestingly enough, I found that when i first got to the payphone, my first
local call would be free, and any after, i would get that nasty intercept
recording. I hate that bitches voice.
These free local calls, i couldn't really explain.. my guess was that they
were the cause of the coins in the hopper, left unaccounted for, and left
up to me to account for them.
A week or two ago, if i recall correctly, i got pretty pissed off with the
centurion. The light in the booth didn't work, not only making it a bitch
to read numbers i had brought with me.. But also because i wanted to
try out my acoustic coupler, not having a laptop, i considered packing
my 386, and a small 9" monochrome orange MDA monitor to the payphone in a
duffle bag, using the AC from the light to power this operation. Not sure
if the light just burnt out or if there was other problems, i called 611
one morning after much thought.
The centurion did many things i found interesting. The above, also when
releasing the line, and going off hook, before a dialtone was heard, there
would be a few clicks, usually 2 or 3, sometimes 4, all with static in
between. Sometimes i swear i could hear a voice in these clicks.
Lately, there would be a constant 4 clicks before i would get a dialtone,
and when dialing PBXs/extenders/etc, when being connected to a tie trunk,
it was quite prominent, in the sense that i could hear 1-2 clicks with the
static while being transfered. Usually from 800.646.0000(telus dial around
ops which i often use for collect calls) while being transfered to the actual
system from the "welcome to telus" or variant message.
Telus was pissing me off at the time(and still is) so i walked to the
centurion one morning, and my first call was to that of telus repair, 611.
I reported that the payphone did weird things, it was often staticy (as it
was) and the lights on the booth didn't light and this caused much greif
as i couldn't read the numbers off my telus calling card. (yeah right!)
"I didn't even know there was a payphone here because i always traveled past
in the dark! I only found it in the daylight..."
A week had passed when i realized the payphone granted unlimited free local
calling, when i realized this, i spent a fair bit of time at the phone.
A week later, after having completed an all niter, i skated down to the
centurion, with a few numbers in mind to call, one being fairly important,
in regards to a job as my dad was on our single landline.
The moment i picked up the handset something seemed odd, as i dialed 411
i noticed a new armored cable, it was much longer, and not as thick as the
original. I pulled the handset away from my ear, and there was indeed a new
handset. I continued with my call, got the number i needed and proceeded to
dial it.
"you call could not be completed as dialed...please check the number, read
the instruction card, or dial 0 for assistance, thank you from telus.."
I immediately threw the handset at the keypad, if this phone had a leg, it
would kick me right in the fucking nuts. I hit the hook switch a few times,
it made a single click, the dialtone was very clear.
Next i dialed the ring back, the ringing startled me ... i never learned
exactly how long it would take for the ring back to do its work, as the
"old" centurion was unpredictable; sometimes, the ring back wouldn't work,
and i could pick up the handset and hear the test tone, it had infact worked
the phone just didnt bother to let me know. Other times the ringing would
be delayed, or the ring would be extremely faint.
After the second ring from the repaired payphone, which was answered with
haste, i quickly pressed the hook switch, and released just as fast, and i was
greeted with a dialtone. I listened to it for abit thinking what to call.
It was always what, rarely who.
Telus operators weren't really people were they?
I called the telus automated dialaround, 800.646.0000, and placed a collect
call, the line was very clean, as the call was routed, i didn't have anything
to call.. so i went home.
Today, September 14, 2001 i've come to terms with the centurion.
Looking for information, while high on information, i tried to pull up
information for my fellow centurion.
Many documents on newer phones, the millenium, elcotels, paytels...
No avail. Re-reading the other payphone information, i wondered if it were
possible for a line seizing exploit to be carried out on the brown box??
I found something rather interesting, according to payphone-directory.org
a series of 130v pulses is used to signal coin return, and coin collect at
the end of the call.
This is some what correct, if a local call were placed, and the called
party answered, the hopper would empty its contents to the cash box.
So the pulses that would be sent at the END of the call would be a coin
return if a NIS, busy, or number of that sort reached.
This pseudo green boxing 'technique' obvisouly has something to do with the
problems the centurion had before it was repaired.
I could not find any documentation on the centurions required loop line
current, but when i find a good multimeter (my 20$ canadian tire piece
wouldn't do the trick..) i will get a reading of the current line current.
Before i phoned repair, the loop current must have been quite high, as I
experienced various problems with the phone including, cut offs (i assumed
it was the handset, this was true some of the time), cross talk was heard
sometimes, i was able to hear squealing, and generally just shitty quality.
Also, i quite often got alot of circuit failures, and even now with the phone
'repaired' (the fucker didn't fix up the light) i can not reach any numbers
prefixed with 310, which should be toll free anywhere in alberta, and as I
understand, other areas.
Oh well atleast i won't have to worry about standing near spiders that aren't
there because of the extended armored cabling.
In the phones previous state, 310 was reached with no problem.
Im going to slap some resisters on that line, fuck telus.
Also, i believe it possible for the centurion to be exploited using a line
seizing sort of 'attack'. Stay tuned, as i bend telus over bare.
--phlux
_____
sksk.
--
<nitroburn> Generating a 2048 bit RSA private key
<KittyInaComa> how? what program?
<nitroburn> its for cert checking.. SSL
<nitroburn> *** GENERATING SSL-KEYS FROM CERTIFICATE **
<KittyInaComa> I don't get it
<nitroburn> sush clone.
<KittyInaComa> :x
--
restrict.txt
by phlux
phlux@fucktelus.com
NOTE: THIS FILE IS INTENDED FOR OWNERS OF SUCH DEVICES.
Restrictors, Dial restricts, toll restiors, etc..
They all serve one obvious purpose. Toll restrictors come in many forms.
Radio shack sells a few models, but the ones i have come in contact with, are
simple low end models.
Toll restricors come in a few forms, they look like normal mod jacks, either
surface or wall(flush) mounts. They can restrict(or help to) dialing of any
phone number, phones numbers more then 7 digits, etc. Often the programming
of a restrictor is as that it will not allow dialing to long distance, 411,
usually just so the phone can be used for local calling. (courtesy phones)
However, they never restrict 911 as this is illegal.
Personaly, I have only come into contact with restricted phones twice. One
was at a school, where there was a student phone(non PBX'd) and it did not
have 3 digit dialing restricted, so i was able to bust out the tone dialer,
*67 and basically have access to an unrestricted dial tone.
Another case was at a small orginazation/office, where there was a public
phone in the lobby type area. So you can think of places where such devices
may be implemented. This one had a timer, that would disconnect your call
after the programmed amount of time.
Onto the progrmaming;
Most use 11 (DTMF 1 1 keyed into the dial restricted phone) as the code
to initialize programming, while newer units use 10.
1X-XXXX,XXXX. is the format for changing programming.
1X(either 10 or 11, depending on the unit) initializes the toll restrictor.
The first series of XXXX's is the passcode (4 digits, default being 2222)
Once this is done, the dialtone will be re-established(denoted by the comma)
The second series of XXXX's is the programming code.
The period denotes a beep.
*----------------------------------------------------------------------------*
| Code Effect |
|++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++|
|1X-2222,1040. Replace 2222 with correct passcode, this sets a new pass- |
| code. After keying new passcode, a single beep is heard. |
|============================================================================|
|1X-XXXX,1057. After the beep is heard, the restrictor is disabled. |
|============================================================================|
|1X-XXXX,1062. Restrictions are activated once the beep is heard. |
|============================================================================|
|1X-XXXX,# # is any telephone number that you want to dial, evading any|
| programmed restrictions. (one time use) |
|============================================================================|
|1X-XXXX,1093. Same as above, but prevents the dialer from detecting DTMF |
| as you dial. (and thinking your dialed number is a code.) |
|============================================================================|
|1X-XXXX,1076. After entering a 2 digit number (01 for 1 upto 99) This is |
| the number of digits that can be dialed without restriction.|
| (doesnot include numbers starting with 0 or 1+)Default is 07|
| 00 disables outgoing calls, 99 is no limit of DTMF digits. |
|============================================================================|
|1X-XXXX,1034. , Key in a phone number followed by # or by waiting for the |
| beep. This number is permitted. Key in area codes, prefixes |
| or an area code and prefix, to permit extended dialing. |
| After each entry, you can hangup after the beep, or to keep|
| programming, wait for the dialtone, and continue. Two beeps |
| will be heard when memory is full. (20 digits) |
|============================================================================|
|1X-XXXX,1021. Resets to factroy defaults, excluding passcode. |
|============================================================================|
|1X-XXXX,1089. Some units have a call timer, enter a two digit number. This|
| number is the maximum call duration in minutes. 00 disables.|
| Timer affects outgoing/incoming calls regardless of phone |
| numbers that aren't restricted. When 30 seconds on the timer|
| remains, a beeps is heard, 2 beeps at 15 seconds. To overide|
| timer wait 40secs before dialing/after answering a call. |
*============================================================================*
Default settings; passcode 2222, only 7 digit dialing, timer off, restrictions
activated, with 0+ and 1+ dialing restricted, as well as
directory assistance 411 and prefix 976.
Getting the password shouldn't take too long, bust out the war dialer.
Or do a bit of scripting, modem string: ATDT10XXXX with modem volume set
loud, so you can hear the dial tone being broken, and then see if the dial
restrictor gives you the dialtone back because you entered the correct pin.
Use AT commands; M1(speaker on)
M2(modem speaker off or on medium volume, depends on modem)
M3(speaker high volume, if supported, use earpiece FED style)
Scope the place out, do the fuckers look like they would have new shit or
is it a bum hotel? Do a psycho-analasysis to determine wether you should
start cracking 10XXXX or 11XXXX
If i get some requests, maybe i will write a little scanner to do all the
work with modem volume off (so it would have to detect dialtone..)
Would be good for stealth operations, and it could be made to work with
anything else (read powerkey.txt)
Tell me what you think, phlux@fucktelus.com
sksk.
^^^^
--
Canadian Packet Switching Networks
Last Updated: 09/20/01
Compiled By: The Clone
theclone@hackcanada.com
http://www.nettwerked.net
The following is a list of the currently
known Packet Switching Networks within Canada.
NAME: DEFINED:
AGNPAC Alberta Government
FASPAC Links Computers
DATAPAC Links Computers
DATAROUTE Large Users
DATALINK Small Users
INET 2000 Databases
ENVOY100 Messaging
TELEPOST Messages At The Post Office
DIALCOM Worldwide Messaging
WPMAIL E-mail
TELETEX Text
FAXCOM Facsimile
FACSROUTE Facsimile
GLOBEFAX Overseas Facsimile
TRADEROUTE Electronic Data Interchange
EXTEN Voice Messaging
.end
--
DRUGS TESTED BY THE CIA UNDER PROJECTS
BLUEBIRD, ARTICHOKE, MKULTRA, AND MKDELTA:
1. Adrenalin
2. Aktetron
3. Alcohol
4. Amphetamine
5. Amphetamine sulphate
6. Analasine
7. Anhalamine
8. Anhalidine
9. Anhaline
10. Anhalonidine
11. Analonine
12. Anhalonium
13. Aphyllidine
14. Aphyllin
15. Atropine
16. Atrosine
17. Bambusa
18. Banisterine
19. Barbiturate
20. Belladonna
21. Benzidrene
22. Bendocaine
23. Bromoharmine
24. Bulbocapnine
25. Butyl-bromally-
barbituric acid
26. Caffeine
27. Caffeine sodium
28. Calcium chloride (35)
29. Cannabidiol
30. Cannabinol
31. Cannabis
32. Cannabol
33. Caramine (narcotic)
34. Carboline
35. Caroegine
36. Chloral hydrate
37. Cocaine
38. Coffee
39. Coramine
40. Delvinyl sodium
41. Di benzo pyran
derivatives
42. Dicain
43. Dramamine
44. Ephedrine
45. Ephetamine
46. Epinephrine
47. Ergot
48. Ergotamine
49. Ethyl harmol
50. Eucaine
51. Eucodal
52. Eukotal
53. Eunacron
54. Epicane
55. Escrine
56. Ether
57. Evipal
58. Evipan
59. Evipan sodium
60. Evipan sodium (35)
61. Genoscopolomine
62. Harmaline
63. Harmalol
64. Harman
65. Harmine
66. Harmine methiodide
67. Harmol
68. Heroin
69. Hexacol
70. Histadyl
71. Hydractine
72. Hypoloid soluble
hexabarbitone
73. Icoral
74. Indole
75. Indole methyllarmine
76. Insulin
77. Lophop-nine
78. Lyscorbic acid
79. (illegible)
80. (illegible)
81. (illegible)
82. (illegible)
83. Manganese chloride (35)
84. Methy-cocaine
85. Metra-ol
86. Morphine
87. Morphine hydrochloride
88. Narco-imal
89. Nambutal
90. Nicotine
91. Nikthemine (narcotic)
92. Nitrous oxide
93. Novacaine
94. Nupercaine
95. Pantocaine
96. Pantopone
97. Parahyx
98. Pellotine
99. Pentobarbitol sodium
100. Pentothal acid
101. Pentothal sodium
102. Percaine
103. Pernoston
104. Peyotl
105. Phenactin
106. Phenamine
107. Pehyl-thio-urethanes
108. Picrate
109. Picrotoxin
110. Procaine
111. Pulegone-orcinol
112. Pulegone-olivetol
113. Pyrahexyl
114. Pyramidon
115. Quinie
116. Salsoline
117. Scolpolmine
118. Scolpolmine aminoxide
hydrobromide
119. Scopolmine-phetamine-eukotal
120. Sodium (62)
121. Sodium amatyl
122. Sodium barbital
123. Sodium dlelvinal
124. Sodium evipal
125. Sodium pentobarbital
(nembutal)
126. Sodium pentothal
127. Sodium phenobarbital
128. Sodium rhodanate
129. Sodium soneryl
130. Sodium succinate (77)
131. sodium thioethamyl
132. Somnifen
133. Stovaine
134. Strychnine
135. Styphnic acid
136. Sympatol
137. Synhexyl
138. Telepathine
139. Tatra-hydro-cannibol-
acetate
140. Tetra-hydro-harman
141. Tetra-hydro-harmine
142. Tropacocaine
143. Tropenone
144. Yageine
145. Yohimbine sulphate
- Sunday, August 26, 2001
- compiled by: The Clone
- theclone@hackcanada.com
- www.nettwerked.net
--
<Flopik> im not a clown ;P
<Flopik> why you want me to say something funny ?
<Flopik> you need quote on kl1ned lol
--
Assassination Politics
by Jim Bell
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!
The organization 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 itself, 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.
Part 2
At the Village Pizza shop, as they were sitting down to
consume a pepperoni, Dorothy asked Jim, "So what other
inventions are you working on?" Jim replied, "I've got
a new idea, but it's really evolutionary. Literally
REVOLUTIONARY." "Okay, Jim, which government are you
planning to overthrow?," she asked, playing along.
"All of them," answered Jim.
Political Implications
Imagine for a moment that as ordinary citizens were
watching the evening news, they see an act by a
government employee or officeholder that they feel
violates their rights, abuses the public's trust, or
misuses the powers that they feel should be limited. A
person whose actions are so abusive or improper that
the citizenry shouldn't have to tolerate it.
What if they could go to their computers, type in the
miscreant's name, and select a dollar amount: The
amount they, themselves, would be willing to pay to
anyone who "predicts" that officeholder's death. That
donation would be sent, encrypted and anonymously, to a
central registry organization, and be totaled, with the
total amount available within seconds to any interested
individual. If only 0.1% of the population, or one
person in a thousand, was willing to pay $1 to see some
government slimeball dead, that would be, in effect, a
$250,000 bounty on his head.
Further, imagine that anyone considering collecting
that bounty could do so with the mathematical certainty
that he could not be identified, and could collect the
reward without meeting, or even talking to, anybody who
could later identify him. Perfect anonymity, perfect
secrecy, and perfect security. And that, combined with
the ease and security with which these contributions
could be collected, would make being an abusive
government employee an extremely risky proposition.
Chances are good that nobody above the level of county
commissioner would even risk staying in office.
Just how would this change politics in America? It
would take far less time to answer, "What would remain
the same?" No longer would we be electing people who
will turn around and tax us to death, regulate us to
death, or for that matter sent hired thugs to kill us
when we oppose their wishes.
No military?
One of the attractive potential implications of such a
system would be that we might not even need a military
to protect the country. Any threatening or abusive
foreign leader would be subject to the same
contribution/assassination/reward system, and it would
operate just as effectively over borders as it does
domestically.
This country has learned, in numerous examples
subsequent to many wars, that once the political
disputes between leaders has ceased, we (ordinary
citizens) are able to get along pretty well with the
citizens of other countries. Classic examples are post-
WWII Germany, Japan, and Italy, and post-Soviet Russia,
the Eastern bloc, Albania, and many others.
Contrary examples are those in which the political
dispute remains, such as North Korea, Vietnam, Iraq,
Cuba, Red China, and a few others. In all of these
examples, the opposing leadership was NOT defeated,
either in war or in an internal power struggle.
Clearly, it is not the PEOPLE who maintain the dispute,
but the leadership.
Consider how history might have changed if we'd been
able to "bump off" Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini,
Tojo, Kim Il Sung, Ho Chi Minh, Ayatollah Khomeini,
Saddam Hussein, Moammar Khadafi, and various others,
along with all of their replacements if necessary, all
for a measly few million dollars, rather than the
billions of dollars and millions of lives that
subsequent wars cost.
But that raises an interesting question, with an even
more interesting answer. "If all this is so easy, why
hasn't this been done before?" I mean, wars are
destructive, costly, and dangerous, so why hasn't some
smart politician figured out that instead of fighting
the entire country, we could just "zero" the few bad
guys on the top?
The answer is quite revealing, and strikingly
"logical": If we can kill THEIR leaders, they can kill
OUR leaders too. That would avoid the war, but the
leadership on both sides would be dead, and guess who
is making the decisions about what to do? That's
right, the LEADERS!
And the leaders (both theirs and ours!) would rather
see 30,000,000 ordinary people die in WWII than lose
their own lives, if they can get away with it. Same in
Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, and numerous other
disputes around the globe. You can see that as long as
we continue to allow leaders, both "ours" and "theirs,"
to decide who should die, they will ALWAYS choose the
ordinary people of each
country.
One reason the leaders have been able to avoid this
solution is simple: While it's comparatively easy to
"get away with murder," it's a lot harder to reward the
person who does it, and that person is definitely
taking a serious risk. (Most murders are solved based
on some prior relationship between the murder and
victim, or observations of witnesses who know either
the murderer or the victim.)
Historically, it has been essentially impossible to
adequately motivate an assassin, ensuring his safety
and anonymity as well, if only because it has been
impossible to PAY him in a form that nobody can trace,
and to ensure the silence of all potential witnesses.
Even if a person was willing to die in the act, he
would want to know that the people he chooses would get
the reward, but if they themselves were identified
they'd be targets of revenge.
All that's changed with the advent of public-key
encryption and digital cash. Now, it should be
possible to announce a standing offer to all comers
that a large sum of digital cash will be sent to him in
an untraceable fashion should he meet certain
"conditions," conditions which don't even have to
include proving (or, for that matter, even claiming)
that he was somehow responsible for a death.
I believe that such a system has tremendous
implications for the future of freedom. Libertarians
in particular (and I'm a libertarian) should pay
particular attention to the fact that this system
"encourages" if not an anarchist outcome, at least a
minarchist (minimal government) system, because no
large governmental structure could survive in its
current form.
In fact, I would argue that this system would solve a
potential problem, occasionally postulated, with the
adoption of libertarianism in one country, surrounded
by non-libertarian states. It could have reasonably
been suspected that in a gradual shift to a libertarian
political and economic system, remnants of a non-
libertarian system such as a military would have to
survive, to protect society against the threats
represented by foreign states. While certainly
plausible, it would have been hard for an average naive
person to imagine how the country would maintain a $250
billion military budget, based on voluntary
contributions.
The easy answer, of course, is that military budgets of
that size would simply not happen in a libertarian
society. More problematic is the question of how a
country would defend itself, if it had to raise its
defenses by voluntary contribution. An equally
simplistic answer is that this country could probably
be defended just fine on a budget 1/2 to 1/3 of the
current budget. True, but that misses the point.
The real answer is even simpler. Large armies are only
necessary to fight the other large armies organized by
the leadership of other, non-libertarian states,
presumably against the will of their citizenry. Once
the problem posed by their leadership is solved (as
well as ours; either by their own citizenry by similar
anonymous contributions, or by ours), there will be no
large armies to oppose.
Part 3
In the 1960's movie, The Thomas Crown Affair, actor
Steve McQueen plays a bored multi-millionaire who
fights tedium by arranging well-planned high-yield bank
robberies. He hires each of the robbers separately and
anonymously, so that they can neither identify him nor
each other. They arrive at the bank on schedule,
separately but simultaneously, complete the robbery,
then separate forever. He pays each robber out of his
own funds, so that the money cannot be traced, and he
keeps the proceeds of each robbery.
In my recent essay generally titled "Digitaliberty," or
earlier "Assassination politics," I hypothesized that
it should be possible to LEGALLY set up an organization
which collects perfectly anonymous donations sent by
members of the public, donations which instruct the
organization to pay the amount to any person who
correctly guesses the date of death of some named
person, for example some un-favorite government
employee or officeholder. The organization would total
the amounts of the donations for each different named
person, and publish that list (presumably on the
Internet) on a daily or perhaps even an hourly basis,
telling the public exactly how much a person would get
for "predicting" the death of that particular target.
Moreover, that organization would accept perfectly
anonymous, untraceable, encrypted "predictions" by
various means, such as the Internet (probably through
chains of encrypted anonymous remailers), U.S. mail,
courier, or any number of other means. Those
predictions would contain two parts: A small amount of
untraceable "digital cash," inside the outer "digital
envelope," to ensure that the "predictor" can't
economically just randomly choose dates and names, and
an inner encrypted data packet which is encrypted so
that even the organization itself cannot decrypt it.
That data packet would contain the name of the person
whose death is predicted, and the date it is to happen.
This encrypted packet could also be published, still
encrypted, on the Internet, so as to be able to prove
to the world, later, that SOMEBODY made that prediction
before it happened, and was willing to "put money on
it" by including it outside the inner encrypted
"envelope." The "predictor" would always lose the
outer digital cash; he would only earn the reward if
his (still-secret) prediction later became true. If,
later on, that prediction came true, the "lucky"
predictor would transmit the decrypt key to the
organization, untraceably, which would apply it to the
encrypted packet, and discover that it works, and read
the prediction made hours, days, weeks, or even months
earlier. Only then would the organization, o
r for that
matter anyone else except the predictor, know the
person or the date named.
Also included in that inner encrypted digital
"envelope" would be a public key, generated by the
predictor for only this particular purpose: It would
not be his "normal" public key, obviously, because
that public key would be traceable to him. Also
present in this packet [would be the reward] the
predictor has earned. (This presentation [of the
digital coins, making up the reward, to the issuing
bank] could be done indirectly, by an intermediary, to
prevent a bank from being able to refuse to deal with
the organization.)
Those "digital cash" codes will then be encrypted using
the public key included with the original prediction,
and published in a number of locations, perhaps on the
Internet in a number of areas, and available by FTP to
anyone who's interested. (It is assumed that this data
will somehow get to the original predictor. Since it
will get to "everyone" on the Internet, it will
presumably be impossible to know where the predictor
is.) Note, however, that only the person who sent the
prediction (or somebody he's given the secret key to in
the interim) can decrypt that message, and in any case
only he, the person who prepared the digital cash
blanks, can fully "unblind" the digital cash to make it
spendable, yet absolutely untraceable. (For a much
more complete explanation of how so-called "digital
cash" works, I refer you to the August 1992 issue of
Scientific American.)
This process sounds intricate, but it (and even some
more detail I haven't described above) is all necessary
to:
1. Keep the donors, as well as the
predictors, absolutely anonymous, not only to
the public and each other, but also to the
organization itself, either before or after
the prediction comes true.
2. Ensure that neither the organization, nor
the donors, nor the public, is aware of the
contents of the "prediction" unless and until
it later becomes true. (This ensures that
none of the other participants can be
"guilty" of knowing this, before it happens.)
3. Prove to the donors (including potential
future predictors), the organization, and the
public that, indeed, somebody predicted a
particular death on a particular date, before
it actually happened.
4. Prove to the donors and the public
(including potential future predictors) that
the amount of money promised was actually
paid to whoever made the prediction that
later came true. This is important,
obviously, because you don't want any
potential predictor to doubt whether he'll
get the money if he makes a successful
prediction, and you don't want any potential
donor to doubt that his money is actually
going to go to a successful predictor.
5. Prevent the organization and the donors
and the public from knowing, for sure,
whether the predictor actually had anything
to do with the death predicted. This is true
even if (hypothetically) somebody is later
caught and convicted of a murder, which was
the subject of a successful "prediction":
Even after identifying the murderer through
other means, it will be impossible for anyone
to know if the murderer and the predictor
were the same person.
6. Allow the predictor, if he so chooses, to
"gift" the reward (possibly quite
anonymously) to any other person, one perhaps
totally unaware of the source of the money,
without anyone else knowing of this.
Even the named "target" (the "victim") is also assured
of something: His best "friend," could collect the
reward, absolutely anonymously, should they "predict"
his death correctly. At that point, he will have no
friends.
This may represent the ultimate in compartmentalization
of information: Nobody knows more than he needs to, to
play his part in the whole arrangement. Nobody can
turn anyone else in, or make a mistake that identifies
the other participants. Yet everyone can verify that
the "game" is played "fairly": The predictor gets his
money, as the donors desire. Potential future
predictors are satisfied (in a mathematically provable
fashion) that all previous successful predictors were
paid their full rewards, in a manner that can't
possibly be traced. The members of the public are
assured that, if they choose to make a donation, it
will be used as promised. This leads me to a bold
assertion: I claim that, aside from the practical
difficulty and perhaps, theoretical impossibility of
identifying either the donors or the predictor, it is
very likely that none of the participants, with the
(understandable) hypothetical exception of a
"predictor" who happens to know that he is also a
murderer, could actually be considered "guilty" of any
violation of black-letter law. Furthermore, none of
the participants, including the central organization,
is aware, either before or after the "prediction" comes
true, that any other participant was actually in
violation of any law, or for that matter would even
know (except by watching the news) that any crime had
actually been committed.
After all, the donors are merely offering gifts to a
person who makes a successful prediction, not for any
presumed responsibility in a killing, and the payment
would occur even if no crime occurred. The
organization is merely coordinating it all, but again
isolating itself so that it cannot know from whom the
money comes, or to whom the money eventually is given,
or whether a crime was even committed.
(Hypothetically, the "predictor" could actually be the
"victim," who decides to kill himself and "predict"
this, giving the proceeds of the reward to his chosen
beneficiary, perhaps a relative or friend. Ironically,
this might be the best revenge he can muster, "cheating
the hangman," as it were.)
In fact, the organization could further shield itself
by adopting a stated policy that no convicted (or, for
that matter, even SUSPECTED) killers could receive the
payment of a reward. However, since the recipient of
the reward is by definition unidentified and
untraceable even in theory, this would be a rather
hollow assurance since it has no way to prevent such a
payment from being made to someone responsible.
Part 4
In part 3, I claimed that 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. I won't attempt to "prove" this, for
reasons that I think will be obvious. First, even if
such an operation were indeed "legal," that fact alone
would not stop its opponents from wanting to shut it
down. However, there is also another way of looking at
it: If this system works as I expect it would, even
its claimed "illegality" would be irrelevant, because
it could operate over international borders and beyond
the legal reach of any law-abiding government.
Perhaps the most telling fact, however, is that if this
system was as effective as it appears it would be, no
prosecutor would dare file charges against any
participant, and no judge would hear the case, because
no matter how long the existing list of "targets,"
there would always be room for one or two more. Any
potential user of this system would recognize that an
assault on this system represents a threat to its
future availability, and would act accordingly by
donating money to target anyone trying to shut it down.
Even so, I think I should address two charges which
have been made, apparently quite simplistically,
claiming that an implementation of this idea would
violate the law. Specifically: "Conspiracy to commit
murder" and "misprision of felony."
As I understand it, in order to have a "conspiracy"
from a criminal standpoint, it is necessary to have at
least two people agree to commit a crime, and have some
overt act in furtherance of that crime.
Well, this charge already "strikes out" because in the
plan I described, none of the participants agrees with
ANYONE to commit a crime. None of the participants
even informs anyone else that he will be committing a
crime, whether before or after the fact. In fact, the
only crime appears (hypothetically; this assumes that a
crime was actually committed) to be a murder committed
by a single individual, a crime unknown to the other
participants, with his identity similarly unknown.
Remember, the "prediction" originally sent in by the
predictor was fully encrypted, so that the organization
(or anyone else, for that matter) would be unable to
figure out the identity of the person whose death was
predicted, or the date on which it was predicted to
occur. Thus, the organization is incapable of
"agreeing" with such a thing, and likewise the donors
as well. Only if the prediction later came true would
the decrypt key arrive, and only then would the
organization (and the public) be made aware of the
contents. Even then, it's only a "prediction," so even
then, nobody is actually aware of any crime which can
be associated with the predictor.
"Misprision of Felony"
This crime, sort of a diluted form of "accessory before
and/or after the fact," was claimed to qualify by "Tim
of Angle," who subsequent to my answer to him on this
subject has totally failed to support his initial
claim. (A recent curiosity is that this crime is one
that has been charged against Michael Fortier, the
person who claims he helped OKC bombing suspect Tim
McVeigh "case the joint" at the Federal building.)
I include it here, nevertheless, because his simplistic
(and un-careful) reading of my idea led him to perhaps
the "closest" law that one might allege that the
participants would have broken. Tim claimed: No.
That's called "misprision of felony" and makes you an
accessory before the fact. Arguably, under the felony
murder rule you could get capital punishment in a
state that has such.
However, I did a little library research, checking
Black's Law Dictionary. Here is the entry for this
item:
"Misprision of felony. The offense of
concealing a felony committed by another, but
without such previous concert with or
subsequent assistance to the felon as would
make the party concealing an accessory before
or after the fact. United State s v.
Perlstein, C.C.A.N.J., 126 F.2d 789, 798.
Elements of the crime are that the principal
committed and completed the felony alleged,
that the defendant had full knowledge of that
fact, that the defendant failed to notify the
authorities, and that defendant took an
affirmative step to conceal the crime. U.S.
v. Ciambrone, C.A. Nev., 750 F.2d 1416, 1417.
Whoever, having knowledge of the actual
commission of a felony recognizable by a
court of the United States, conceals and does
not as soon as possible make known the same
to some judge or other person in civil or
military authority under the United States,
is guilty of the federal crime of misprision
of felony. 18 U.S.C.A 4." See also
Obstructing Justice in Black's Law
Dictionary.
The only "element" of this crime which is arguably
satisfied is the first: Some person other than the
defendant for "misprision of felony" committed a crime.
The second element fails miserably: "...that the
defendant had full knowledge of that fact... " My
previous commentary makes it clear that far from "full
knowledge of that fact," other participants are
carefully prevented from having ANY "knowledge of that
fact." The third element, "..that the defendant failed
to notify the authorities..." is also essentially non-
existent: No other participants have any information as
to the identity of a predictor, or his location, or for
that matter whether he has had any involvement in any
sort of crime. In fact, it would be possible for each
of the other participants to deliver (anonymously,
presumably) copies of all correspondence they have
sent, to the police or other agency, and that
correspondence would not help the authorities even
slightly to identify a criminal or even necessarily a
crime.
In fact, normal operation of this organization would be
to publicize "all" correspondence it receives, in order
to provide feedback to the public to assure them that
all participants are fulfilling their promises and
receiving their rewards. This publication would
presumably find its way to the police, or it could even
be mailed to them on a "fail[ure] to notify
authorities." Nevertheless, none of this material
could help any authorities with their investigations,
to their dismay.
The fourth and last element of the crime of "misprision
of felony", "...and that defendant took an affirmative
step to conceal the crime," would totally fail. The
organization would not " conceal" the crime. In fact,
it will have no ability to do anything to the contrary,
if for no other reason that it has no knowledge of
the crime! And as described above, it would carefully
avoid having access to any information that could help
solve the crime, and thus it would escape any
obligations along these lines.
Summary:
In hindsight, it is not surprising that such
an organization could operate legally within
the U.S., although at least initially not
without political opposition. First, this
[the U.S.] is at least nominally supposed to
be a "free country," which should mean that
police and other authorities aren't able to
punish behavior just because they don't like
it.
Secondly, it is obvious that most laws today
were originally written during an era in
which laws assumed that "conspirators" at
least knew each other, had met each other,
could identify each other, or had (at least!)
talked to each other. On the contrary, in my
scenario none of the participants even know
on what continent any of the others reside,
let alone their country, city, or street.
They don't know what they look like, sound
like, or for that matter even "type like":
None of their prose, save a few sparse
"predictions," ever gets communicated to
anyone else, so even text-comparison programs
would fail to "target" anyone.
Equally surprising (to those who originally
wrote the laws against "conspiracy") would be
"Person A's" ability to satisfy himself that
"Person B" deserves the award, without
knowing that "Person B" is (or is not)
actually responsible for a particular death.
Part 5
In the previous four notes on the subject of
Digitaliberty, I've suggested that this concept
(collecting anonymous donations to, in effect,
"purchase" the death of an un-favorite government
employee) would force a dramatic reduction of the size
of government at all levels, as well as achieving what
will probably be a "minarchist" (minimal government)
state at a very rapid rate. Furthermore, I pointed out
that I thought that this effect would not merely affect
a single country or continent, but might in fact spread
through all countries essentially simultaneously.
But in addition to such (apparently) grandiose claims,
it occurs to me that there must be other changes to
society that would simultaneously occur with the
adoption of such a system. After all, a simplistic
view of my idea might lead one to the conclusion that
there would be almost no governmental structure left
after society had been transformed. Since our current
"criminal justice system" today is based totally on the
concept of "big government," this would lead a naive
person to wonder how concepts such as "justice,"
"fairness," "order," and for that matter protection of
individual rights can be accomplished in such a
society.
Indeed, one common theme I've seen in criticisms of my
idea is the fear that this system would lead to
"anarchy." The funny thing about this objection is
that, technically, this could easily be true. But
"anarchy" in real life may not resemble anything like
the "anarchy" these people claim to fear, which leads
me to respond with a quote whose origin I don't quite
remember:
"Anarchy is not lack of order. Anarchy is lack of
ORDERS."
People presumably will continue to live their lives in
a calm, ordered manner. Or, at least as calm and
ordered as they WANT to. It won't be "wild in the
streets," and they won't bring cannibalism back as a
national sport, or anything like that.
It occurs to me that probably one of the best ways to
demonstrate that my idea, "assassination politics"
(perhaps ineptly named, in view of the fact that its
application is far greater than mere politics), would
not result in "lack of order" is to show that most if
not all of the DESIRABLE functions of the current so-
called "criminal justice system" will be performed
after its adoption. This is true even if they will be
accomplished through wholly different methods and,
conceivably, in entirely different ways than the
current system does.
I should probably first point out that it is not my
intention to re-write the book of minarchist theory. I
would imagine that over the years, there has been much
written about how individuals and societies would
function absent a strong central government, and much
of that writing is probably far more detailed and well-
thought-out than anything I'll describe here.
One reason that ALMOST ANY "criminal justice system"
would be better and more effective than the one we
currently possess is that, contrary to the image that
officialdom would try to push, anyone whose job depends
on "crime" has a strong vested interest in maintaininga
high level of crime, not eliminating it. After all,
a terrorized society is one that is willing to hire
many cops and jailers and judges and lawyers, and to
pay them high salaries. A safe, secure society is not
willing to put up with that. The "ideal" situation,
from the limited and self-interested standpoint of the
police and jailers, is one that maximizes the number of
people in prison, yet leaves most of the really
dangerous criminals out in the streets, in order to
maintain justification for the system. That seems to be
exactly the situation we have today, which is not
surprising when you consider that the police have had
an unusually high level of input into the "system" for
many decades.
The first effect of my idea would be, I think, to
generally eliminate prohibitions against acts which
have no victims, or "victimless crimes." Classic
examples are laws against drug sales and use, gambling,
prostitution, pornography, etc. That's because the
average (unpropagandized) individual will have very
little concern or sympathy for punishing an act which
does not have a clear victim. Without a large, central
government to push the propaganda, the public will view
these acts as certainly not "criminal," even if still
regarded as generally undesirable by a substantial
minority for a few years. Once you get rid of such
laws, the price of currently illegal drugs would drop
dramatically, probably by a factor of 100. Crime
caused by the need to get money to pay for these drugs
would drop drastically, even if you assume that drug
usage increased due to the lowering of the price.
Despite this massive reduction in crime, perhaps as
much as 90%, the average person is still going to want
to know what "my system" would do about the residual,
"real" crime rate. You know, murder, rape, robbery,
burglary, and all that. Well, in the spirit of the
idea, a simplistic interpretation would suggest that an
individual could target the criminal who victimizes
him, which would put an end to that criminal career.
Some might object, pointing out that the criminal is
only identified in a minority of crimes. That
objection is technically correct, but it's also a bit
misleading. The truth is that the vast majority of
"victim"-type crimes are committed by a relatively tiny
fraction of the population who are repeat criminals.
It isn't necessary to identify For example, even if the
probability of a car thief getting caught, per theft,
is only 5%, there is at least a 40% probability of
getting caught after 10 thefts, and a 65% chance after
20 thefts. A smart car-theft victim would be happy to
donate money targeting ANY discovered car-thief, not
necessarily just the one who victimized him.
The average car-owner would be wise to offer such
donations occasionally, as "insurance" against the
possibility of his being victimized someday: An
average donation of 1 cent per day per car would
constitute $10,000 per day for a typical city of 1
million cars. Assuming that amount is far more than
enough to get a typical car thief's "friends" to "off"
him, there is simply no way that a substantial car-
theft subculture could possibly be maintained.
Another alternative is that insurance companies would
probably get into the act: Since they are going to be
the financial victims of thefts of their insured's
property, it is reasonable to suppose that they would
be particularly inclined to deter such theft. It is
conceivable that current-day insurance companies would
transmogrify themselves into investigation/deterrence
agencies, while maintaining their insurance role, in
view of the fact that they have the most to lose. This
is particularly true because if "assassination
politics" (as applied to criminals and crime) comes
about, they could then actually DO SOMETHING about the
problem, rather than merely reporting on the statistics
to their customers and stockholders.
Such companies would also have a strong motivation to
provide a workable system of rewards for solving crimes
and identifying criminals, rewards that (naturally
enough!) can be given out totally anonymously.
While I would like to talk about the other advantage of
this new kind of justice, the fact that politicians and
other government employees would no longer have de-
facto immunity in most cases, the reality is that since
we would no longer HAVE "politicians and other
government employees," to mention that advantage would
be redundant.
The principle is valid, however: In today's system, you
can have people known to be guilty of crimes, but not
prosecuted because they are part of "the system."
Classic examples would be heroes of the right (Oliver
North) and heroes of the left (Jim Wright) who either
escape prosecution or conviction for "political" or
"bureaucratic" reasons. With "assassination politics"
that would simply never happen.
Part 6
A frequent initial belief among people who have
recently heard of my "assassination politics" idea is
the fear that this system will somehow be "out of
control": It would end up causing the death of
ordinary, "undeserving" people.
This system, however, will not be without its own kind
of "control". Not a centralized control, decidable by a
single individual, but a decentralized system in which
everyone gets an implicit "vote." A good analogy might
be to consider a society in which everyone's house
thermostat is controlled to operate at a temperature
which is set for the entire country. Each person's
control input is taken as a "vote," whether to get
hotter, colder, or to stay the same temperature. The
central control computer adjusts the national setpoint
temperature in order to equalize the number of people
who want the temperature colder and hotter. Each house
is at the same, nationally set temperature, however.
Clearly, no one individual is in control of the
setting. Nevertheless, I think it would be generally
agreed that this system would never produce a REALLY
"off the wall" temperature setting, simply because so
many people's inputs are used to determine the output.
Sure, if a group of 10,000 kids decided (assisted by
the Internet) together to screw with the system, and
they all set their houses' thermostat inputs to
"hotter," they could SLIGHTLY increase the overall
setting, but since there are probably about 100 million
separate dwellings in the U.S., their fiddlings will be
drowned out by the vast majority of the population's
desires. Is this system "out of control"? True, it is
out of the "control" of any single individual, but
nevertheless it is well within the control of the
population as a whole.
It turns out that "assassination politics" actually has
a rather similar control mechanism to the one I've
described above. First, I've pointed out that if I
were to operate a centralized system such as this, I'd
only accept donations naming people who are in
violation of the "Non-Initiation Of Force Principle"
(NIOFP), well known to libertarians. By this standard,
government employees (who have accepted paychecks paid
for with funds stolen from citizenry by taxes) and
criminals whose crimes actually had a victim would be
included. Let's call this hypothetical organization
"Organization A," or OrgA for short.
True, somebody else might be a little less scrupulous,
accepting donations for the termination of ANYBODY
regardless of whether he "deserves" his fate (call them
"Organization B," or OrgB, for short.) Most potential
donors (who, I suggest, would have "typical" levels of
scruples) would see that if they patronize OrgB, their
interests wouldn't be protected. For example, OrgB
(if it survives and thrives) might later come back to
target them, because of some other donor. OrgA would
not. Naturally, our "ethical" donors don't want this,
so they would choose to give their donation to the
most "ethical" organization that will accept it. This
maximizes the donors' benefit, and minimizes the
potential harm.
Since BOTH organizations will accept donations for
"deserving" victims, while only OrgB will accept them
for "just anybody," it is reasonable to conclude that
(capitalism being what it is) OrgB's rates (the
percentage of the price it keeps as profit) can be and
will be higher for its donations (that's because there
is less competition in its area of specialization.)
Thus, it would be more economical to target "deserving"
people through OrgA , and thus donors will be drawn to
it. In addition, OrgA will become larger, more
credible, believable and trustworthy, and more
potential "guessers" (assassins?) will "work" its
system, and for lower average potential payments (all
else being equal.) Even so, and ironically, the
average donation level for people listed by OrgA would
likely be higher, since (if we assume these are
"deserving" people) more people will be contributing
towards their demise.
After all, if a potential donor wants to "hit" some
government bigwig, there will be PLENTY of other donors
to share the cost with. Millions of donations of $1 to
$10 each would be common and quite economical. On the
other hand, if you just selected a target out of the
telephone directory, an "undeserving" target, you'll
probably be the only person wanting to see him dead,
which means that you'll probably have to foot the whole
bill of perhaps $5K to $10K if you want to see any
"action. " Add to that OrgB 's "cut," which will
probably be 50%, and you're talking $10K to $20K. I
contend that the likelihood of this kind of thing
actually happening will be quite low, for "undeserving
victims."
Now, the die-hards among you will probably object to
the fact that even this tiny residual possibility is
left. But consider: Even today it would be quite
"possible" for you to pick a name randomly out of a
list, find him and kill him yourself. Does this
frequently happen? Apparently not. For just one thing,
there's no real motive. Unless you can show that the
application of "assassination politics" would
dramatically increase the likelihood of such incidents,
I suggest that this "problem" will likely not be a
problem after all.
For a while, I thought that the "lack of a motive"
protection was momentarily overturned by a
hypothetical: I thought, suppose a person used this
system as part of a sophisticated extortion scheme, in
which he sends an anonymous message to some rich
character, saying something like "pay me a zillion
dollars anonymously, or I put out a digital contract on
you." For a while, this one had me stumped. Then, I
realized that an essential element in this whole play
was missing: If this could be done ONCE, it could be
done a dozen times. And the victim of such an
extortion scheme has no assurance that it won't happen
again, even if he pays off, so ironically he has no
motivation to pay off the extortion. Think about it:
The only reason to make the payment is to remove the
threat. If making the payment can't guarantee to the
target that the threat is removed, he has no reason to
make the payment. And if the target has no reason to
make the payment, the extortionist has no reason to
make the threat!
Another, related (and equally simplistic) fear is that
political minorities will be preferentially targeted.
For example, when I pointed out that "establishment"
political leaders would probably "go" quite quickly,
one wag suggested to me that "libertarian leaders"
could likewise be targeted. Such a suggestion reflects
a serious misunderstanding of political philosophy, and
libertarians in particular: I consider it obvious (to
me, at least) that libertarians NEED no leaders. (You
don't need leaders if you don't want to control a
population, or achieve political power. The only
reason libertarians "need" leaders today is to take
places in the government and (then) to shut it down.)
And if my idea is implemented, "libertarian leaders"
represent no more of a threat to anyone than the
average libertarian citizen.
Fully recognizing this, another (and far more credible)
person thought a while, and in a proud revelation
suggested that one way that the establishment would
"fight back" is to convert to a government that is
based on fully decentralized authority, as opposed to
the leader-centric system we have today. Such a system
could not be attacked by killing individual people, any
more than you can kill a tree by pulling off a single
leaf. His "solution" was, in effect, to totally
disband the current government and turn it over to the
public at large, where it highly de-centralized system
that is not controlled by a tiny fraction of the
population in a structure called a "government,"
essentially identical to his idea. So in effect, the
only way the government can survive is to totally
surrender. And once it surrenders, the people win.
And in practice, it will have no alternative.
Will this idea be "out of control"? To a great extent,
that depends on what your definition of the word
"control." I have come to believe that "assassination
politics" is a political Rorschach (ink-blot) test:
What you think of it is strongly related to your
political philosophy.
Part 7
Dear libertarian Friend,
I very much understand the concerns you voiced about my
idea which I call, "Assassination Politics," because
this essay is nothing if it is not radical and
extreme. I wrote it, in the middle of last year,
partly because I think libertarianism and libertarians
in particular need to address what is, if not a
contradiction," is at least an intolerable reality:
On the one hand, we are told not to initiate
aggression, but on the other we are aggressed against
by the government every time it collects a tax.
I much appreciate the way some people I know have
"dropped out" of the system, and the guts that such a
tactic requires. But that's the problem, I think:
Only those with the "guts" do it, which gives the
government fewer targets so that it can spend more
time attacking the few who oppose it. The reality is
that the government STILL collects taxes, and it STILL
uses that money to violate our rights. We all know
that's wrong.
My position is quite simple: If tax collection
constitutes aggression, then anyone doing it or
assisting in the effort or benefiting from the proceeds
thereof is a criminal. This is quite analogous to
current law which prosecutes co-conspirators. While I
am not holding out "current law" as some sort of gold-
standard of reasonableness that we must always accept,
on the other hand I think it's plausible to use it to
show that once we have come to the conclusion that
taxation is theft, the prescription follows directly
by a form of reasoning allegedly acceptable to society:
It is reasonable to "attack the attackers" and their
co-conspirators, and everyone who is employed by the
government is thus a co-conspirator, even if he is not
directly involved in the collection of those taxes.
That's because he IS involved in _benefiting_ from the
proceeds of these taxes, and he presumably provides a
certain level of "backup" to the young thugs that
governmental organizations often hire.
I realize, and you should too, that the "non-aggression
principle" says nothing about the EXTENT of the self-
defense/retaliation that one might reasonably employ
in defending one's own rights: In a sense, that sounds
like an omission because it at least suggests that a
person might "unreasonably" defend himself with lethal
force when far less drastic means might normally be
called for. For what it's worth, I think most people
will behave responsibly. But I think it is pretty
straightforward to argue that whatever means are
necessary to stop the attack, are reasonable given the
terms of the non-aggression principle: If a given
means are known to be inadequate to actually stop the
attack, then further and more serious means are
reasonable and called-for.
To set up a reasonable analogy, if I'm walking down the
canonical "dark alley" and am accosted by a man
wielding a knife threatening me with it, it is
presumably reasonable for me to pull a gun and threaten
back, or possibly take the encounter to the final
conclusion of gunfire. Even if I should choose to
hold my fire and test to determine whether my actions
deterred him, I can't see that this possibility binds
me morally. And should he advance, despite the gun,
as if to attack, I should feel no remorse in shooting
him and taking myself out of danger. If you accept the
premises so far, you apparently accept the principle
that escalation of the self-defense/retaliation is
reasonable as long as if the current level of returned
counter-threat is inadequate to stop the aggression
initiated by the other party. To believe otherwise is
to believe that ultimately, you are obligated to
accept a certain high level of aggression simply
because you do not have the resources (yet) to resist
it. I totally reject this concept, as I hope you
would.
So if, hypothetically, I could have an anonymous
conversation with a hard-nosed government employee,
and asked him, "If I killed one of your agents, would
you stop trying to collect that tax from me," his
predictable reaction would be, "no, we would continue
to try to collect that tax." In fact, he would
probably hasten to add that he would try to have me
prosecuted for murder, as well! If I were to ask if
killing ten agents would stop them, again they would
presumably say that this would not change their
actions.
The conclusion is, to me, obvious: Clearly, there is
no practical limit to the amount of self-defense that
I would need to protect my assets from the government
tax collector, and to actually stop the theft, so I
suggest that logic requires that I be morally and
ethically allowed (under libertarian principles) to
use whatever level of self-defense I choose.
You raised another objection, that quite frankly I
believe is invalid. I believe you implied that until
a specific level of escalation is reached ( such as the
Feds showing up on your doorstep, etc) then it is not
legitimate to defend oneself. Delicately, I must
disagree. As we all well know, government ultimately
operates primarily not on actual, applied force, but
simply the threat of future force if you do not comply.
True, there are people who have decided to call the
government's bluff and simply drop out, but the
reality is that this is not practical for most
individuals today. This is no accident: The
government makes it difficult to drop out, because they
extort the cooperation of banks and potential employers
and others with which you would otherwise be able to
freely contract. In any case, I fail to see how not
"dropping out" makes one somehow morally obligated to
pay a tax (or tolerate the collection of one). I
trust you did not inadvertently mean to suggest this.
The reason, morally, we are entitled to shoot the
mugger if he waves the knife in our face is that he has
threatened us with harm, in this case to our lives, but
the threat the government represents to the average
citizen (loss of one's entire assets) is just as real,
albeit somewhat different. Since government is a past
reality, and a present reality, and has the immediate
prospects of being a future reality as well, I
sincerely believe that the average citizen can
legitimately consider himself CONTINUOUSLY threatened.
The aggression has already occurred, in continuously
occurring, and has every prospect of continuing to
occur. If anything would justify fighting back, this
would.
To continue the analogy, if you've been repeatedly
mugged by the same guy down the same dark alley for
each day of last month, that DOES NOT mean that you've
somehow consented to the situation, or that your rights
to your assets have somehow been waived. With my
"Assassination Politics" essay, I simply proposed that
we (as libertarians as well as being ordinary citizens)
begin to treat aggression by government as being
essentially equivalent to aggression by muggers,
rapists, robbers, and murderers, and view their acts
as a continuing series of aggressions. Seen this way,
it should not be necessary to wait for their NEXT
aggression; they will have always have been aggressing
and they will always BE aggressing, again and again,
until they are stopped for good.
At that point, the question shifted to one of
practicality: Sure, theoretically we might morally
have the "right" to protect ourselves with lethal
force, but if they have any reputation at all,
government agents have a habit of showing up in large
numbers when they actually apply direct force. To take
a position that you can only defend yourself when
they've chosen the "where" and "when" of the
confrontation is downright suicidal, and I hope you
understand that I would consider any such restriction
to be highly unfair and totally impractical.
Understand, too, that the reason we're still stuck
under the thumb of the government is that to the extent
it's true, "we've" been playing by THEIR rules, not by
our own. By our own rules, THEY are the aggressors and
we should be able to treat them accordingly, on our own
terms, at our own convenience, whenever we choose,
especially when we feel the odds are on our side.
I understand, obviously, that the "no initiation of
aggression" principle is still valid, but please
recognize that I simply don't consider it to be a valid
counter-argument to "Assassination Politics," at least
as applied to targets who happen to be government
agents. They've "pre-aggressed," and I don't see any
limit to the defenses I should be able to muster to
stop that aggression completely and permanently. Not
that I don't see a difference between different levels
of guilt: I fully recognize that some of them are far
worse than others, and I would certainly not treat a
lowly Forest Service grunt in the same fashion as an
ATF sniper.
Now, there is one more thing that I would hope we could
get straight: As I originally "invented" this system,
it occurred to me that there could be certain arguments
that it needed to be "regulated" somehow; "unworthy"
targets shouldn't be killed, etc. The "problem" is,
what I've "invented" may (as I now believe it to be)
actually a "discovery," in a sense: I now believe this
kind of system was always inevitable, merely waiting
for the triad of the Internet, digital cash, and good
encryption in order to provide the technical
underpinnings for the entire system. If that is
genuinely the case, then there is no real way to
control it, except by free-market principles.
It would be impossible, for example, to set up some
sort of "Assassination Politics Dictator," who decides
who will live and who will die, because competition in
the system will always rise to supply every demand,
albeit at possibly a very high price. And if you
believe the maxim that "absolute power corrupts
absolutely," you wouldn't want to accept any form of
centralized control (even, perhaps, that of your own!),
because any such control would eventually be corrupted.
Most rational people recognize this, and I do too. I
would not have invented a system where "Jim Bell" gets
to make "all the decisions." Quite the contrary, the
system I've described absolutely prevents such
centralization. That, quite frankly, is the novelty
and dare I say it, the beauty of this idea. I believe
that it simply cannot be hijacked by centralized
political control.
As I pointed out in the essay, if I were running one of
the organizations accepting those donations and
offering those prizes, I would selectively list only
those targets who I am genuinely satisfied are guilty
of the violation of the "non-aggression principle."
But as a practical matter, there is no way that I could
stop a DIFFERENT organization from being set up and
operating under DIFFERENT moral and ethical principles,
especially if it operated anonymously, as I anticipate
the "Assassination Politics"-type systems will be.
Thus, I'm forced to accept the reality that I can't
dictate a "strongly limited" system that would
"guarantee" no "unjustified" deaths: I can merely
control my little piece of the earth and not assist in
the abuse of others. I genuinely believe, however,
that the operation of this system would be a vast
improvement over the status quo.
This, I argue, is somewhat analogous to an argument
that we should be entitled to own firearms, despite the
fact that SOME people will use them
wrongly/immorally/illegally. The ownership is a right
even though it may ultimately allow or enable an abuse
that you consider wrong and punishable. I consider
the truth of such an argument to be obvious and
correct, and I know you would too.
I realize that this lacks the crisp certitude of safety
which would be reassuring to the average, "pre-
libertarian" individual. But you are not the "average
individual" and I trust that as long-time libertarians
you will recognize rights must exist even given the
hypothetical possibility that somebody may eventually
abuse them.
I do not know whether I "invented" or "discovered" this
system; perhaps it's a little of both. I do genuinely
believe that this system, or one like it, is as close
to being technologically inevitable as was the
invention of firearms once the material we now know as
"gunpowder" was invented. I think it's on the way,
regardless of what we do to stop it. Perhaps more than
anyone else on the face of this planet, this notion has
filled me, sequentially and then simultaneously, with
awe, astonishment, joy, terror, and finally, relief.
Awe, that a system could be produced by a handful of
people that would rid the world of the scourge of war,
nuclear weapons, governments, and taxes. Astonishment,
at my realization that once started, it would cover the
entire globe inexorably, erasing dictatorships both
fascistic and communistic, monarchies, and even so-
called "democracies," which as a general rule today are
really just the facade of government by the special
interests. Joy, that it would eliminate all war, and
force the dismantling not only of all nuclear weapons,
but also all militaries, making them not merely
redundant but also considered universally dangerous,
leaving their "owners" no choice but to dismantle them,
and in fact no reason to KEEP them!
Terror, too, because this system may just change almost
EVERYTHING how we think about our current society, and
even more for myself personally, the knowledge that
there may some day be a large body of wealthy people
who are thrown off their current positions of control
of the world's governments, and the very-real
possibility that they may look for a "villain" to blame
for their downfall. They will find one, in me, and at
that time they will have the money and (thanks to me,
at least partially) the means to see their revenge.
But I would not have published this essay if I had been
unwilling to accept the risk.
Finally, relief. Maybe I'm a bit premature to say it,
but I'm satisfied we _will_ be free. I'm convinced
there is no alternative. It may feel like a roller-
coaster ride on the way there, but as of today I think
our destination is certain. Please understand, we
will be free.
Your libertarian friend,
Jim Bell
Something is going to happen... Something...
Wonderful!
Part 8
The following article appeared in the Sunday, February
4, 1996 issue of Asahi Evening News, in an article
written by columnist Paul Maxwell, page 6. He writes
a regular column about the Internet for this newspaper.
"Networks: Paul Maxwell"
"Dial Internet for murder"
'The first thing we do, let's kill all the
lawyers." (Shakespeare, Henry VI).
A startling and controversial idea has
surfaced on the Internet recently--fear with
me for a moment while I explain it. It is
based on two technological developments:
digital cash and encryption software.
Briefly, digital cash is a system for
transferring funds from one person to another
on the Net. For this system to be as good as
cash, the transactions must be capable of
being conducted anonymously, just like in
real life. (You go into the Seven-Eleven,
buy a Cafe Latte, and nobody knows your name
or your credit history. The purchase is not
recorded in a database of your consumer
preferences.)
Several competing schemes for digital cash
have been launched, but the one that
eventually gains universal acceptance will
surely have this anonymity feature.
The second innovation is a kind of software
called public-key encryption. It allows you
to send a file or an email message that is
"locked" in such a way that it can only be
opened by the intended recipient. The
recipient, however, cannot open it until
given a "key." This "key" may then be used
to encrypt a return message that can only be
opened by the original sender.
Freelance visionary and tinkerer Jim Bell has
been following both of these developments for
the past few years. Recently, he asked
himself a couple of tough questions: "How
can we translate the freedom afforded by the
Internet to ordinary life?" How can we keep
government from banning encryption, digital
cash, and other systems that will improve our
freedom?"
Suddenly, Bell had a revolutionary idea.
("Revolutionary" is the word he uses, and it
fits.) You and me--the little guys, the
ordinary working people of the world--could
get together, all pitch in, and pay to have
every rotten scoundrel in politics
assassinated. And we could do it legally.
Sort of. Bell imagined an organization that
would award "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 to send those
contributions using digital cash."
He explains 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. "Are you following
this? Let's say that we, the public, decide
we've finally had enough of [insert name of
villain]. Ten dollars from me, ten from you-
-suddenly there's a million dollars in a
fund. The money will go to the first person
who can "predict" the date, time, and
circumstances of the villain's death.
Obviously, this information is only known in
advance by the assassin.
He sends an anonymous, "locked" message. He
kills the villain. He sends the "key" to the
message. He has, without ever revealing his
identity, "correctly predicted" the murder.
The "key" that he has provided is then used
to "lock the award money in a file that is
then publicly posted on the Internet. Only
the person who originated the key may open
the file and claim the digital cash.
In other words, public anger could finance
cash awards for assassinations. The
organization that collected the money and
announced a list of possible targets would
never know about a crime in advance, and
would never know the identity or whereabouts
of a criminal. It would not technically be
guilty of conspiracy or complicity.
Jim Bell has thought about this a lot, and
feels that the idea is technically feasible,
practical, even foolproof. Suppose for a
moment he's right? What are the
implications?
World leaders live with the threat of
assassination every day of their lives. But
at the local level, this could really have an
impact. And the "target" list wouldn't
necessarily to politicians--any offensive
public personality would be fair game.
Picture yourself a year from now, sitting
around with friends. Somebody says,
"Remember when Juice Newton got whacked?"
And you say, "Yeah--best ten bucks I ever
spent."
Satisfying as it might be to declare war on
asinine pop singers, Bell has a more civic-
minded suggestion: Let's kill all the car
thieves. He reasons that a very small number
of career criminals are responsible for
nearly all car thefts. If one million car
owners in a given metropolitan area
contributed just four dollars a year, it
would create $10,000 a day in "prize money"
for the "predictor" of any car thief's death.
"Assuming that amount is far more than enough
to get a typical car thief's 'friends' to
'off' him," he writes, "there is simply no
way that a substantial car-theft subculture
could possibly be maintained."
Jim as high hopes for his plan--he thinks it
could eventually lead to the end of political
tyranny. But if you don't like this idea, he
has others. In a recent email exchange, I
asked what he was doing now.
"I recommend that you rent the movie, The Day
the Earth Stood Still, he answered. "I'm
working on a similar project."
Part 9
For about a year I have been considering the
implications of "Assassination Politics," and for more
than six months I've been sharing the subject and my
musings with you, the interested reader. I've also
been debating the issue with all comers, a self-
selected bunch who range from enthusiastic proponents
to clueless critics. Ironically, some of you have even
chided me for "wasting time" with some of the less
perceptive among my numerous "opponents." In defense,
my response has always been that when I respond to a
person, I do it not primarily for his benefit, but for
others who might be fence-sitting and are waiting to
see if my idea will break down anywhere.
If there is anything which has fascinated me as much as
the original idea, it is this vast and dramatic
disparity between these various responses. It's been
called everything from "a work of genius" to
"atrocious," and probably much worse! Clearly, there
must be a fundamental, social issue here that needs to
be resolved.
While nobody has quite yet said it in those terms, I'm
sure that more than one of you have probably wanted to
react to my prose with the line, "See a shrink!"
[American slang for a psychiatrist, for the
international readers out there.] Well, in a sense
that's exactly what I did, but the "shrink" I "saw" had
been dead for over five decades: Sigmund Freud. Much
to my surprise, I was handed a copy of a book,
Introduction to Great Books (ISBN 0-945159-97-8) which
contained (page 7) a letter from Freud to Albert
Einstein. On page 6, there is an introduction,
describing the reason for this communication. It
says:
"In 1932, the League of Nations asked Albert
Einstein to choose a problem of interest to
him and to exchange views with someone about
it. Einstein chose "Is there any way of
delivering mankind from the menace of war?"
as his problem and Sigmund Freud as his
correspondent. In his letter to Freud,
Einstein said that one way of eliminating war
was to establish a supranational organization
with the authority to settle disputes between
nation as and power to enforce its decisions.
But Einstein acknowledged that this solution
dealt only with the administrative aspect of
the problem, and that international security
could never be achieved until more was known
about human psychology. Must right always be
supported by might? Was everyone susceptible
to feelings of hate and destructiveness? It
was to these questions Freud addressed
himself in his reply."
Interestingly enough, when I first started thinking
about the idea that I would later term "Assassination
Politics," I was not intending to design a system that
had the capability to eliminate war and militaries.
What I was targeting, primarily, was political tyranny.
By my standards, that included not merely totalitarian
governments but also ones that many of us would
consider far more benign, in particular the Federal
government of the United States of America, "my"
country. Only after I had thought of the fundamental
principle of allowing large numbers of citizens to do
away with unwanted politicians was I "forced," by my
work up to that point, to address the issue of the
logical consequences of the operation of that system,
which (by "traditional" ways of thinking) would leave
this country without leaders, or a government, or a
military, in a world with many threats. I was left
with the same fundamental problem that's plagued the
libertarian analysis of forming a country in a world
dominated by non-libertarian states: It was not clear
how such a country could defend itself from aggression
if it could not force its citizens to fight.
Only then did I realize that if this system could work
within a single country, it could also work worldwide,
eliminating threats from outside the country as well as
corrupt politicians within. And shortly thereafter, I
realized that not only could this occur, such a spread
was absolutely inevitable, by the very nature of modern
communications across the Internet, or older
technologies such as the telephone, fax, or even
letters written on paper. In short, no war need ever
occur again, because no dispute would country he
intended to war with, obviously, but he would also draw
the ire of citizens within his own country who either
didn't want to pay the taxes to support a wasteful war,
or lose their sons and daughters in pointless battles,
or for that matter were simply opposed to participating
in the aggression. Together, all these potentially-
affected peoples would unite (albeit quite anonymously,
even from each other) and destroy the tyrant before he
had the opportunity to make the war.
I was utterly astonished. Seemingly, and without
intending to do so, I had provided a solution for the
"war" problem that has plagued mankind for millennia.
But had I? I really don't know. I do know, however,
that very few people have challenged me on this
particular claim, despite what would normally appear to
be its vast improbability. While some of the less
perceptive critics of "Assassination Politics" have
accused me of eliminating war and replace it with
something that will end up being worse, it is truly
amazing that more people haven't berated me for not
only believing in the impossible, but also believing
that the impossible is now actually inevitable!
A little more than a week ago, I was handed this book,
and asked to read Freud's letter, by a person who was
aware of my "little" philosophical quandary. I began
to read Freud's letter in response to Einstein, having
never read any other word Freud had written, and
having read essentially none of the works of the giants
of Philosophy. (Now, of course, I feel tremendously
guilty at the omission in my education, but I've always
been attracted more to the "hard sciences," like
chemistry, physics, mathematics, electronics, and
computers.) Since this letter was specifically on war,
and the question of whether man could ever avoid it, I
felt perhaps it would contain some fact or argument
that would correct what was simply a might end up being
right, but alternatively hoped that if wrong, I would
be soon corrected. I was fearful that I was wrong, but
also fearful that there would be nothing in this essay
that would assist me in my analysis of the situation.
About a third of the way through Freud's letter, I had
my answer. Below, I show a segment of Freud's reply,
perhaps saving the whole letter for inclusion into a
later part of this ongoing essay. While I could
drastically oversimplify the situation and state,
"Freud was wrong!," it turns out that this brief
conclusion is at best highly misleading and at worst
flirting with dishonesty. By far the greater part of
Freud's analysis makes a great deal of sense to me, and
I would say he's probably correct. But it is at one
point that I believe he goes just a bit wrong, although
for reasons which are entirely understandable and even
predictable, given the age in which he lived. It must
be remembered, for example, that Freud was born into an
era where the telephone was a new invention, broadcast
radio was non-existent, and newspapers were the primary
means that news was communicated to the public. It
would be highly unreasonable for us to have expected
Freud to have anticipated developments such as the
Internet, anonymous digital cash, and good public-key
encryption.
In some sense, at that point, my biggest regret was
that I couldn't discuss the issue with either of these
two communicants, Freud having died in 1939, and
Einstein in 1955, after having helped initiate research
that led to the development of the atomic bomb, the
weapon that for decades and even now, makes it
absolutely, vitally important to eliminate the
possibility of war from the world.
But I'll let Dr. Freud speak, as he spoke over sixty
years ago, because he has much to say:
"Such then, was the original state of things:
domination by whoever had the greater might--
domination by brute violence or by violence
supported by intellect. As we know, this
regime was altered in the course of
evolution. There was a path that led from
violence to right or law. What was that
path? It is my belief that there was only
one: the path which led by way of the fact
that the superior strength of a single
individual could be rivaled by the union of
several weak ones. "L'union fait la force."
[French; In union there is strength.]
Violence could be broken by union, and the
power of those who were united now
represented law in contrast to the violence
of the single individual. Thus we see that
right is the might of a community. It is
still violence, ready to be directed agai
nst
any individual who resists it; it works by
the same methods and follows the same
purposes. The only real difference lies in
the fact that what prevails is no longer the
violence of an individual but that of a
community."
[But below is where I think Freud falls into a certain
degree of error, perhaps not by the standards and
realities of his day, but those of ours. My comments
are in square brackets,], and Freud's comments are
quoted "". Freud continues: ]
"But in order that the transition from
violence to this new right or justice may be
effected, one psychological condition must be
fulfilled. The union of the majority must be
a stable and lasting one. If it were only
brought about for the purpose of combating a
single dominant individual and were dissolved
after his defeat, nothing would be
accomplished. The next person who though
himself superior in strength would once more
seek to set up a dominion by violence and the
game would be repeated ad infinitum. The
community must be maintained permanently,
must be organized, must draw up regulations
to anticipate the risk of rebellion and must
institute authorities to see that those
regulations--the laws-- are respected and to
superintend the execution of legal acts of
violence. The recognition of a community of
interests such as these leads to the growth
of emotional ties between the members of a
united group of people--communal feelings
which are the true source of its strength."
[end of Freud's quote]
[Those of you who truly comprehend the idea of
"Assassination Politics" will, I'm confident,
understand exactly why I considered this segment of
Freud's letter to be important enough to include, and
will probably also recognize why I consider Freud's
analysis to go wrong, albeit for comparatively minor
and understandable reasons. I will address the last
paragraph in greater detail, to explain what I mean. I
will repeat Freud's words, and address each of his
points from the standpoint of today's situation and
technology.]
"But in order that the transition from
violence to this new right or justice may be
effected, one psychological condition must be
fulfilled. The union of the majority must be
a stable and lasting one." [In a sense, Freud
is absolutely correct: Whatever system is
chosen to "govern" a society, it must
continue to operate "forever." ] Freud
continues:
" If it were only brought about for the
purpose of combating a single dominant
individual and were dissolved after his
defeat, nothing would be accomplished."
[This is where the problem begins to creep in. Freud
is leading up to justifying the existence of a formal
government as he knew them in the 1930's, based on the
continuing need for keeping the peace. The first, and
I think, the most obvious problem is that Freud seems
to implicitly assume that the purpose of the union will
actually be fulfilled by the formation of a government.
Freud, who died in 1939, didn't see what his survivors
saw, a "legitimate" government in Germany having killed
millions of people in the Holocaust, or many other
incidents subsequent to that. And Freud, whose letter
was written in 1932, was probably not aware of the
slaughter of the Russian Kulaks in the late 1920's and
early 1930's, or the purges which followed. Freud
could have felt, generally, that the problems with a
country's governance were caused either by inadequate
government or simply a rare example of government gone
bad. We know, to the contrary, that governments very
frequently "go bad," in the sense of violating
citizen's rights and abusing the power entrusted to
them. Few may end up killing millions, but to assume
that we must continue to tolerate governments just
because they don't go quite as far as Nazi Germany
would be foolish in the extreme.]
[The second problem is the implicit assumption that the
long-term control he (correctly) sees MUST come from an
organization like a traditional government. True, in
the era in which Freud lived, that conclusion made a
great deal of sense, because a well-functioning
government appeared superior to none at all. And it
was at least plausible that such control COULD come
from a government. But as the old saying goes, "Power
corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."]
[To use a house's thermostat as an analogy, but
differently than I did in "Assassination Politics, part
6," a person who lived in an era before automatic
furnace thermostats would always conclude that a
person's efforts would have to be continually directed
towards maintaining an even temperature in his house,
by adding fuel or limiting it, by adding more air or
restricting, etc. To the extent that this manual
control constitutes a "government," he will believe
that this hands-on control will always be necessary.
But we now live in a time where a person's time is
rarely directed towards this effort, the function
having been taken over by automatic thermostats which
are cheap, reliable, and accurate. They are also,
incidentally, essentially "uncorruptible," in the sense
that they don't fail except for "understandable"
reasons, and repair is cheap and easy. (And a
thermostat can never be bribed, or get tired, or have
its own interests at heart and begin to subvert your
own commands.) Quite simply, the progress of
technology has put control of temperature in the hands
of an automatic, error-free system that is so reliable
as to be ignorable most of the time.]
[I argue that likewise, the progress of technology
would allow an automatic system to be set up, which I
called "Assassination Politics" (but could probably use
a more apt name, since its application extends far
beyond the issue of politics) different from
traditional government, a difference somewhat analogous
to the difference between a person's full-time efforts
and an automatic thermostat. Aside from the dramatic
reduction in effort involved, an automatic system would
eliminate the errors caused by inattention by the
operator, such as leaving, falling asleep, or other
temporary lack of concentration. These failures are
somewhat analogous to the failure or misbehavior of a
corruptible or indifferent or even a malicious
government.]
[This makes a government like Freud saw totally
unnecessary. Of course, Freud could not have
anticipated the technological developments that would
make an "automatic" replacement for government even
possible, and thus he followed his contemporary
paradigms and sought to justify the governments as they
then existed.] Freud continues:
"The next person who thought himself superior
in strength would once more seek to set up a
dominion by violence and the game would be
repeated ad infinitum."
[This statement is correct, but I think it misses the
point: Many functions of individuals and machines are
never "completed", and must "be repeated ad infinitum."
(The most basic example: If we are optimistic about
the future of the human race, by definition
reproduction and survival must be "repeated ad
infinitum.") That does not mean that the mechanism
which handles that need must be any more complicated
that the minimum necessary to achieve the control
needed. I agree that a system of long-term control is
necessary; where I disagree with Freud is simply that I
believe that a vastly better method of control now can
potentially exist than the traditional governments that
he knew. To the extent that he couldn't have
anticipated the Internet, anonymous digital cash, and
good encryption, he had no reason to believe that
government could be "automated" and taken out of the
hands of a tiny fraction of the population, a fraction
which is corruptible, malicious, and self-interested.
Also, by not being aware of modern technology, he is
unaware how easy it has become, conceptually, for
people to come together for their self-defense, if that
self-defense required only a few kilobytes be sent over
fiber-optic cables to a central registry. Freud's
objection to an "endlessly repeating" system breaks
down in this case, so his conclusion need not be
considered valid.]
Freud continues:
"The community must be maintained
permanently, must be organized, must draw up
regulations to anticipate the risk of
rebellion and must institute authorities to
see that those regulations--the laws-- are
respected and to superintend the execution of
legal acts of violence."
[Again, I think Freud misses the point. He refers to
"the risk of rebellion," but I think he forgets that
the main reason for "rebellion" is the abuse by the
government then in control. (Naturally, it looks
differently from the standpoint of that government!)
If the latter problem could be eliminated, "rebellion"
would simply never occur, for there would be no reason
for it. If those that were "rebelling" were in the
wrong, violating somebody's rights, then my
"Assassination Politics" system would be able to take
care of it. This, presumably and understandably, Freud
could never have foreseen. Also, Freud does not address
the question of whether or not the government which
promulgates those laws is doing so in a way primarily
for the benefit of the public, or those who populate
the government itself. Graft was well known if Freud's
time; it seems to me that he should have addressed the
question of whether or not an entity called a
"government" could actually achieve the benefits he
claims justify the government, without being subverted
by those who control it, for their own interests. If
not, then there is certainly a issue to be addressed:
At what point do the depredations of a parasitic
government exceed its benefits? And can we find a way
to do without it?] Freud continues:
"The recognition of a community of interests
such as these leads to the growth of
emotional ties between the members of a
united group of people--communal feelings
which are the true source of its strength."
[this is end of the portion of Freud's letter
which I quote here.]
One of the interesting things about this statement is
that it is the development of tools such as the
Internet which will be eliminating the very concept of
"foreign" and "foreigner." They will become artificial
distinctions. There is clearly much precedent for
this, from the country in which I live, America. When
formed, it contained people whose primary loyalty was
to their state, not to the Federal government as a
whole. Even our civil war, from 1861 to 1865, was based
on loyalty to states or regions, rather than the
country as a whole. To cite just one example, myself,
while I reside in the state called Washington, I've
lived in a number of other states, but I don't consider
myself loyal to any particular state. (Perhaps using
myself as an example is misleading, because at this
point I don't consider myself "loyal" to any government
at all!)
In fact, later in Freud's letter, he says, "Anything
that encourages the growth of emotional ties between
men must operate against war." Sadly, Freud did not
live to see the development of the Internet, and the
massive international communication which it has
already begun to foster. In his day, the ordinary
people of one country and another rarely communicated,
except perhaps for letters with relatives from "the old
country" that emigrated. The idea of going to war with
people from whom you get email on a daily basis is, in
itself, a "foreign concept" to me, and I hope it will
remain so! In that sense, Freud was very right:
"Assassination Politics" active or not, it will be much
harder for governments to whip up their citizens into a
frenzy to kill the enemy if they can type to them every
day. Frustratingly left unanswered is a question whose
answer I'd like to know: Could I have convinced Freud,
or Einstein, that "Assassination Politics" is not only
a necessary or even an unavoidable system, but also a
GOOD one? Could I convince them today, had they
miraculously survived until today, aware of the last 64
years of history subsequent to their correspondence?
Jim Bell
Klaatu Burada Nikto
Something is going to happen...
Something...Wonderful!
Part 10: "Non-Euclidean Thinking"
An interesting communication I had recently on the
subject of "Assassination Politics." The other
person's commentary starts with a ">". The subject is
how to actually implement this system, and my first
comment notices the fact that despite my efforts, the
government has not attempted to use this issue to
justify some sort of crackdown on net rights, or
anything like that.
I think they're actually afraid to start the debate,
>I think they don't believe you're a threat.
You're probably right about this. I guess I'll have to
think of something to change their minds, huh?
>Remember, they have incredible amounts of money with
which to hire bright but greedy people. All they have
to do is find the people running the "Guess the Death
Date" lottery. They would have great incentive to
apply their considerable resources to this end.
Your logic is excellent. But as strange as it may
seem, there may be a different way... Let's see, how
do I explain? First, a little diversion that may or
may not be relevant to this subject, but initially
won't appear to be so.
Somewhere around 20-25 years ago, I read some item
concerning Howard Hughes, the late billionaire. It
described the history of his business ventures, in
fields such as aircraft ("Spruce Goose" is a well-known
example) but also mentioned that Hughes Tool was
(originally?) into oil-well drilling equipment.
I don't know how much you know about oil well drilling
and drill bits, but they look nothing like the classic
fluted drill bits common in hardware stores. Oil well
drill bits consist of multiple ultra-hard carbide
points mounted on rotating shafts mounted at the end of
the drill "string," and these shafts must be connected
to the main shaft with bearings. They roll around on
the rock, not sliding, and they "spall" off pieces of
rock due to enormous applied pressure.
Oil well drilling is done by lubricating the drilling
operation with what is called "drilling mud," which is
actually a slurry of solids in water, which is
primarily used to cool the cutter and wash away the
rock chips and dust produced in the operation. Now,
since the rotating cutter wheels must spin on their
axis, that means they have to be run on shafts with
bearings installed. These bearings cannot be perfectly
sealed and thus protected against rock and mud dust,
and their useful lifetime is strongly limited by their
quality.
And since every time they wear out the whole drill
string has to be pulled from the well, that's an
EXTREMELY expensive proposition for well-drillers. So
it should not be surprising that these guys considered
bearing quality to be very, very important. A little
improvement was worth a lot of money.
"Quality", to a bearing manufacturer, is strongly
related to surface hardness, and traditionally, the
best bearings were (and, mostly, still are) the
hardest. But there's a problem: Ultimately, a very
hard circular bearing rotating on a very hard flat
surface (especially if its heavily loaded) applies
nearly all its for on a single point (for ball
bearings) or on a single line (for roller bearings) and
that eventually causes bearing failure. So there was
an upper limit, generally, on how good you could get in
bearings. And the hardest won. Until Hughes.
[don't go to sleep yet... it gets relevant real soon]
According to the source I read, what Hughes Tool did
that made them really rich was quite simple and counter-
intuitive: Rather than trying to make his bearings as
HARD as you can get, he made them SOFT, very soft,
"almost as soft as lead." (Which, if you know
anything about metals, is very soft indeed.) The
bearings deformed on their raceways, spreading out the
load over a far larger area, and the resulting bearings
were the best in the business. (He probably also
applied a lot of research into how to avoid "metal
fatigue," but that's quite another story.)
Very counter-intuitive, but he "won" precisely because
he did exactly the opposite of what everyone "knew" was
the proper way to go. Okay, so that explains a genius
who later became a billionaire who later turned into a
neurotic, or worse. "What," you will ask, "does this
all have to do with Assassination Politics?"
Well, to draw an observation originally posited in an
essay titled the "Libertech Project," about 7 years
ago, libertarians (of all people) are "non-Euclidean
thinkers." Basically, this means that we recognize
that the best way to go from "point A" to "point B" is
NOT NECESSARILY a straight line. And like Columbus,
who sailed west in order to go east, sometimes it is
necessary to sit down, and totally re-think your
strategy if you're trying to accomplish some goal.
By "classical" thinking, "Assassination Politics" would
have to be the best, tightest-security, more protected
organization that has ever existed on the face of this
planet. Just about EVERY powerful person would want to
kill anybody who had anything to do with such a system.
The codes would have to be unbreakable, the remailers
would have to be certain, but most importantly, each
and every participant would have to be perfectly
anonymous to even have a prayer of pulling it off.
Especially the operators of such a system. Especially
them.
That's classical thinking. And that's what I thought a
few months ago. I thought, "it's do-able, but it's
gonna be a lot of work!"
But let's suppose, for a moment, that somebody "pulls a
Hughes." Rather than trying to make the hardest
bearings in the world, why doesn't somebody try to make
the softest? Rather than trying their darndest to stay
anonymous, or wait and let somebody else implement this
system, why not just "let it all hang out," (as the
saying went in the 1960's) and publicly announce that
they're implementing this system, come hell or high
water, and invite anyone who wants to participate to
help form what will be the LAST revolution on earth,
the one that'll take down ALL the governments.
This sounds crazy, right? I mean, who wants to die?
Who wants to commit suicide just to... just to... just
to... make an ENTIRE WORLD FREE FOREVER? Free from
wars, militaries, governments, taxes, political
oppression. Free from the kind of totalitarian
governments that existed and currently exist. Free
from the Holocausts that have killed Jews, Cambodians,
Armenians, Russian Kulaks, Iraqi Kurds, Chinese
dissidents, Native Americans, and oh so many others?
"Who, exactly, would be stupid enough to risk death to
make the world free???"
Everyone who volunteered to fight to fight Hitler, to
name just one example. Remember, or have we forgotten
so soon, that occasionally people die to keep the rest
of us free. That's the way it's been for hundreds of
years. The United States of America was founded by
people who risked death to shake off the yoke of a
government that was, by the standards of the day, not
particularly bad.
Think about it. Somebody had to be the first one to
start banging on the Berlin Wall, with a sledgehammer,
in 1989. Somebody had to be the first to walk through.
Somebody had to be the first to stand up and say,
"Enough!" And the ironic thing is, the most strangely
unusual thing, is that the entire Eastern Bloc fell,
almost bloodlessly, in a couple weeks, because one by
one everybody realized that all that's sometimes
required is to finally stand up and be counted, and to
just say no to the government. When the time was
right, all it took was a slight push and the dominoes
tumbled down.
Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting that
EVERYONE would be identified. The "donors" to the
system would remain perfectly anonymous, and the
"guessers" would likewise be perfectly anonymous, but
the organization itself would be made up of real
people, who have published addresses, who have simply
decided that they have had enough of the current system
and are going to participate in a PERFECTLY LEGAL
enterprise by the laws of the country, and just DARE
the government to try to stop them. The organization
wouldn't have to buy ads; the publicity firestorm would
be enormous. Suddenly, all the politicians would be
put on the spot! Instead of being asked by the
reporters for their position on the economy, pollution,
the budget deficit, or some other thing, they'll ask,
"Why should the public NOT want to see you dead?"
When would be the best time to do it? Why, during a
major political campaign! When Congress is out of
session, and they can't pass legislation without
calling some sort of emergency session. But it won't
matter anyway, for a few weeks the organization doesn't
actually have to take bets or make payments, they'll
merely publicize their efforts for all to see. To
reassure the public, they could announce that they'll
only take bets on elected and appointed political
officeholders...and anyone who tries to stop the
system. And the politicians will be scurrying around,
looking for political cover, trying to figure out how
to NOT look scared, but at the same time each is
wondering if he'll be the first to go. And all the
while, the public will be loving it, laughing at the
efforts of the politicos to cover their collective
asses, and taking private bets among themselves on who
will be the first one to die.
Prosecute the participants? On what charge?
"Conspiracy to commit gambling"? Which prosecutor
would risk appearing to be impeding the progress of a
useful system? At that point, the organization's
members will just be publicly exercising their first-
amendment rights. Which judge would take the case?
Now THEY'RE on the spot, THEY have to decide what to
do. I contend that in an election year, before the
election, there would be mass resignations from
Congress, or members deciding "it's just not fun
anymore" and decline to return even if re-elected, as
well as the complete loss of whatever residual
confidence the public has in the government. Whew! Is
this all just wishful thinking? I really don't know!
-EOF-
-- Credits
Without the following contributions this zine issue would be fairly
delayed or not released, so thank you to the following people:
Anonymous, Phlux, (and myself) The Clone
-- Shouts:
Hack Canada (#HackCanada), Canadian Phreakers Union (#cpu), #PhreakBC,
Blackened @ Damage Inc., The Grasshopper Unit, Flippersmack, Pyrofreak,
plappy, soap, krys, Kybo_ren, Flopik, and lastly to everyone and anyone
who contributes to the Canadian H/P scene.
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.;. A .;. .;.
;.. N E T T W E R K E D ;..
;..;.. P R O D U C T ;..;..
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.;.;;.; .;. ..; ;. > > > > > > i love me!
