[WSIS CS-Plenary] Assassination Politics in Tunis - some consideration

[Joe Baptista]

Internet governance has nothing to do with root infrastructure.  The
Internet obliterates the very concept of governance, as we know it today.
I remember warning people back in 1995 that the Internet transferred
authority through protocols.  Those protocols recognize end users as
having final authority.  That's just the way the silly thing was built.
This authority does not give governments any rights to control core
functions.  It does give end users the right to control governments.

I would like those attending Tunis to ask a question.  What if the
Internet was used to transfer a states sovereign right to kill to
end-users?   MIT graduate Jim Bell developed such a protocol back in April
of 1997.  He gave it the catchy title "Assassination Politics."

The protocol uses a death lottery system to empower users with an
imaginative and sophisticated tool for improving governmental
accountability by way of anonymous, untraceable political assassinations.
The systems intended effect is to enhance public influence on government,
and in the short-term, better government.

Untraceable anonymous technologies provide users and organizations with a
support infrastructure that legally announces the awarding, and payment,
of cash prizes to anybody who correctly "predicts" the death date of any
one of a list of government employees, officeholders, appointees or civil
servants.

Funded through cash contributions made in a lottery style process, players
who predict the death date of a targeted civil servant win the lottery.
The use of encryption, untraceable digital cash, anonymous communication,
algorithmically complex wagering and associated technologies transfer a
states sovereign right to kill to end-users.

How will we deal with this?  I think you can all see the potential.

http://jya.com/ap.htm

cheers
joe baptista


Joe Baptista, Official Public-Root Representative and Lobbyist to the
United States Congress and Senate / Tel: +1 (202) 517-1593

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