Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

internetworkers - Re: [internetworkers] truly weird, does not appear to be a hoax...

internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Simon Spero <ses AT unc.edu>
  • To: "Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/" <internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [internetworkers] truly weird, does not appear to be a hoax...
  • Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2003 15:49:55 +0100

This is a lot like Jim Bell's "assassination politics" theory. He went to jail for it (well, sort of).

This program is basically a way of federally subsidizing terrorism; if you're a terrorist, you know who your targets are, and when they're going to be hit. As long as you make sure you only buy futures on your targets seconds before the strike begins, you get the best prices without tipping your hand (or, since futures can be highly leveraged, you can set up diversions by making large bets on non targets.

This system could prevent this if it required all particpants to be verifiably linked to registered, identified persons. This would allow legitimate private sector intelligence processing to be fed back into threat evaluation models. However, if this threat information is made available to targets security details, they will work to counter the threat, making the contract worthless.

This problem could be worked around by requiring contracts to be asymmetric, and only allowing payouts on one side if an attempt is made, but thwarted, or that no attempt will be made, with no payout permitted for succesful attempts, but this still is vulnerable to gaming; if you're trying to encourage people to defect, it's a lot more efficient to just offer $15 million a corpse.

Simon


<http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,42951,00.html>
<http://jya.com/ap.htm>



--On Tuesday, July 29, 2003 8:42 AM -0400 Maria Winslow <maria.winslow AT windows-linux.com> wrote:

This today in the NY Times (free registration required) -

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/29/politics/29TERR.html?th

A new Sim World? A tool for mass hysteria?

Maria
---
Come and play at the InterNetWorkers Web site!
http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/ You are currently subscribed to
InterNetWorkers mailing list
To unsubscribe visit
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/internetworkers








Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page