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

[Simon Spero <ses AT unc.edu>]

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
> ---
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