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