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James Dalton Bell (born 1958) is an American crypto-anarchist who created the idea of arranging for anonymously-sponsored assassination payments via the Internet, which he called "assassination politics". Bell was targeted and identified by the Federal government of the United States as a "techno-terrorist", leading to his trial and imprisonment on felony charges in 1997.

Background

Bell attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he earned a degree in chemistry and lived in Vancouver, Washington until his arrest and imprisonment by the United States federal government. Bell, an electronic engineer was arrested in 1989 for illegally manufacturing methamphetamine, but pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of failing to report receiving a controlled chemical, for which he paid a fine of $2,500. Bell later involved himself with the Multnomah County Common Law Court in Portland which put government officials on trial in absentia and awarded judgements against them. Bell became involved in a tax dispute with the Internal Revenue Service who adjudged that he owed $30,000 to the federal government.

Assassination Politics

In 1996, Bell authored "Assassination Politics" in which he developed the idea of using digital signatures on electronic mail to create an assassination market, "predicting" the deaths of IRS agents and other government employees. In effect, the idea would create an incentive for assassination of these agents, creating a "prize" that could be "won" by someone willing to submit an entry "predicting" a given agent's death at a particular time. The person could then kill the agent at about that time, thus winning the pool money. The purpose was to intimidate the IRS agents and others into no longer enforcing tax rulings and tax and other laws. Bell published his idea in a ten-part essay titles "Assassination Politics" on the alt.anarchism USENET newsgroup.

Described by Wired as "an unholy mix of encryption, anonymity, and digital cash to bring about the ultimate annihilation of all forms of government", the essay garnered a Chrysler Award for Innovation in Design in 1998 as "an imaginative and sophisticated prospective for improving governmental accountability". Libertarian economist Bob Murphy criticised the assassination politics scheme in a pair of articles titled "The Politics of Destruction" in 2002. Murphy claimed that assassination politics was both technically infeasible and ideologically undesirable – from an anarcho-capitalist perspective (crypto-anarchism being a form of anarcho-capitalism).

While the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that advocating violence against government officials is protected by the First Amendment, realistic threats can be punished, and "Assassination Politics" put Bell under the scrutiny of federal investigators.

Investigation, prosecution and imprisonment

The IRS raided Bell's parents home on April Fool's Day, 1997 and seized three semi-automatic assault rifles, a handgun, several computers containing indecipherable encrypted data, as well as dangerous chemicals including sodium cyanide and an alleged nerve-gas precursor (Bell had previously boasted of producing sarin of the type used in the 1995 attack on the Tokyo subway ). He was subsequently arrested in May of that year, and in July pleaded guilty to charges of obstruction of IRS agents and the use of a false Social Security number (officials alleged that he had used four such numbers since 1984 in order to conceal his assets).

As part of his plea bargain, Bell admitted collecting the names and home addresses of IRS employees, and the home addresses of FBI, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents and police in Clark County; Bell also accepted responsibility for conducting a stinkbomb attack in the Vancouver IRS office and for the assassination market scheme. During the trial, the government's lead investigator compared Bell with Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and anarcho-primitivist bomber Theodore Kaczynski. He was convicted of the two low-level felonies and sentenced to eleven months in prison followed by three years of probation. He served his prison sentence at a federal medium-security prison in Phoenix, Arizona.

Release and further arrests

I once believed it's too bad that there are a lot of people who work for government who are hard-working and honest people who will get hit (by Assassination Politics) and it's a shame…Well, I don't believe that any more. They are all either crooks or they tolerate crooks or they are aware of crooks among their numbers.

Upon completing his sentence in April 15, 1998, Bell was ordered to pay $1,359 in restitution for the stinkbomb attack and subjected to three years of supervised release. The conditions of his probation included barring Bell from accessing computers and from possessing chemicals. He was rearrested shortly after his release on the charge of violating several of these conditions and was returned to a federal detention center at SeaTac, Washington. Although Bell never attempted to put the assassination market concept into practice, other subscribers to the Cypherpunks mailing list developed the protocols to implement it online. Itinerant musician Carl Edward Johnson developed Dead Lucky, an "assassination bot" which promised to reward accurate dead pool predictions with untraceable and untaxable cash. Federal investigators issued a warrant for Johnson's arrest in August 1998.

References

1. ^ Painter Jr., John. " IRS says suspect discussed sabotage". The Oregonian, 1997-05-20, Metro Section P-1.
2. ^ McCullagh, Declan (2000-11-11). "Crypto-Convict Won't Recant". Wired. Retrieved 2007-11-07. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
3. ^ Westfall, Bruce. "Federal Marshals Arrest James Bell", The Columbian, 1998-06-23.
4. ^ Kaplan, David E., "Terrorism's next wave", U.S. News Online, November 17, 1997
5. ^ "Judge Delays Bell's Sentencing", The Columbian, 1997-11-21, Section A
6. ^ Branton, John. "'They're seeing demons in dark,' says Bell's mother". The Columbian, 1997-05-20. Accessed 2008-01-14
7. Bell, James Dalton. 1996. "Assassination Politics." In Winn Schwartau ed., Information Warfare (2nd ed., pp.420–425. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press.
8. Murphy, Bob (2002-07-11). "The Politics of Destruction". Anti-State.com. Retrieved 2008-01-13. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
9. Murphy, Bob (2002-08-22). "The Politics of Destruction". Anti-State.com. Retrieved 2008-01-13. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
10. Vernor Vinge, James Frankel. True Names: And the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier (2001), Tor Books, p.44
11. ^ Stamper, Chris (1999-04-20). "Guilty Verdict for Cypherpunk". Wired. Retrieved 2008-01-14. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
12. "Activist Bell Faces Sentencing Friday", The Columbian, 1997-11-20, Section B.
13. Branton, John. "Feds accuse Bell of using fibers to shut down computers". The Columbian, 1997-05-20. Accessed 2008-01-14
14. ^ Painter Jr., John. "IRS Says Man From Tacoma Part of Plot ", The Oregonian, 1997-11-20, p. C02
15. McCullagh, Declan (2000-11-11). "IRS Raids Cypherpunk's House". Politics : Law. Wired. Retrieved 2007-11-07. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
16. Associated Press, "Bell gets 11 months in prison, 3 years supervised release, fine", The Oregonian, 1997-12-12.
17. Ludlow, Peter (2001). Crypto Anarchy, Cyberstates, and Pirate Utopias. Cambridge: MIT. ISBN 9780262621519.

External links

• Assassination politics series of articles from Anti-State.com, including essays by Robert P. Murphy
• Jim Bell Files - archive of news articles, essays, and other information on Jim Bell and his essays

• 1958 births
• American tax evaders
• American terrorists
• Anarchism theorists
• Crypto-anarchists
• Cypherpunks
• Imprisoned anarchists
• Living people
• Stalkers