Click Here to Kill
harpers.org
harpers.org
Imagine you can pay in bitcoin where AI drone and carry out the hit...all anonymous
If you haven’t, I recommend reading “Assassination Politics” by Jim Bell. It’s an interesting though exercise.
[1] https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/have-no-fear-of-the-bayi...
Politicians already more or less live in that world... it's why they no longer ride in convertibles with the windows down.
Violence isn't going to explode exponentially merely because an efficient market forms to enable it - if that were the case, the US would already be knee deep in blood, because having that is literally baked into its system as a feature.
People like Jim Bell assume everyone is as sociopathic as they are, but most people aren't. Everyone hates politicians, the government, taxes, etc, but most people aren't willing to kill even if they can get technically away with it. Meanwhile, the personality type willing to commit political violence to begin with is already radicalized enough in their beliefs to likely be willing to risk being caught, even if only for the notoriety. There's no real "casual" market, here.
Then, when you consider the fact that most such sites will always be either honeypots or scams, and the fact that people make OPSEC mistakes all the time (DPR,) meaning people will be caught (and thus, people will know that it's possible to be caught,) then it doesn't seem as qualitative a change as it initially appears.
I don’t think it does.
Consider that the purpose of a marketplace is to connect people who want to produce a good or service with those who want to consume it. Right now, there is a disconnect between “people who want to kill <public figure>” and “people who are willing to kill <public figure>”. A market would change that dynamic.
> People like Jim Bell assume everyone is as sociopathic as they are, but most people aren't. Everyone hates politicians, the government, taxes, etc, but most people aren't willing to kill even if they can get technically away with it. Meanwhile, the personality type willing to commit political violence to begin with is already radicalized enough in their beliefs to likely be willing to risk being caught, even if only for the notoriety. There's no real "casual" market, here.
A market would require two parties: someone who cares enough to pay, and someone who needs the money enough to do it.
If payments are truly anonymous and untraceable, then I’m sure that there are plenty of people and entities out there willing to post the bounty.
If payments are ensured and publicly verifiable, then the consumer here isn’t an “assassin” - it’s someone who needs money badly. Someone who is suicidal but wants to set their family up for life, for instance - or someone who has been diagnosed with a terminal illness and sees claiming an assassination contract as a means of ensuring that their family is taken care of after they’re gone.
At any rate, it’s all in the essay. At the end of the day it’s just a thought exercise.
See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slaughterbots (a frightening horror mockumentary).
In my country, euthanasia is legal, but it's very difficult to stipulate it. For instance, saying you want to be euthanized when you get Alzheimer, is extremely difficult. Such a website could be a solution.
We need a better system for this. Sure, useful for this, but one's family shouldn't have to resort to what is technically murder to do this. There are surely other methods, like adding qualifiers to the Alzheimer's clause and verified on multiple occasions.
Don't get me wrong, I'm very pro-euthanasia, even in a few ways that aren't really socially acceptable. (Alternative to suicide, so long as it persists over some time and one has tried treatments. Oldish but healthy. And so on, so long as it is planned out).
This can easily be used to create so-called "assassination markets" (a Googleable phrase, not my own).
You could simply create a market like "Will so and so die before such and such date?" Then you place a massive bid order at 99.99% odds. Any would-be takers would then have to put up say $1, go out and kill the person before the specified date, and now they're sitting on tokens that are worth $10,000, because the market will resolve to "true."
However, based on the article, there's an apparent lack of law enforcement interest due to jurisdictional challenges. Perhaps it's also harder to get govt funding for something as 'routine' as attempted murder vs headline fodder like pedos.
I imagine there might be an opportunity for a reality TV producer to create a "To Catch a Murderer" show along the lines of "To Catch a Predator." Once they have a real 'client', they could let the client know a date and time for which they'll need an alibi and then suggest a nearby location that has video surveillance by which the would-be client can establish their presence.
That creates an oppty for the host of the show to approach the client at the alibi location, ostensibly to return the client's money because there are 'problems' with the hit. The ensuing conversation would likely lead to some high ratings as well as broadcast-quality, multi-angle indictment evidence.
Scene: a quiet house in the middle of suburbia of Nowhere, MO. The house is dark.
From the inside, someone hears a tapping at the window. The killer quietly slides the window up and through the frame.
Suddenly, all the lights come on and Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" starts blaring through a Logitech Z906 5.1 Surround Sound Speaker System. The killer immediately tries to jump back through the window, but – smack! – the window is shut. It's bulletproof glass, and has been remotely locked.
The song mutes. "Take a seat."
This is entrapment, and is therefore highly illegal and in my opinion immoral as well.
>The key aspect of entrapment is this: Government agents do not entrap defendants simply by offering them an opportunity to commit a crime. Judges expect people to resist any ordinary temptation to violate the law.
https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/entrapment-basics-33...
This would not be entrapment as I described it (emulating the site in the article). I agree with you that law enforcement has been guilty of egregious entrapment by hanging around conservative mosques initiating contact and actively promoting jihad, then encouraging any vaguely interested response to the extreme of supplying the idea, plan, accomplices and means.
What I described was a "murder for hire" site hiding on the dark web and requiring initiating and inquiry, responding positively, specifying the 'hit', paying in advance in bitcoin and finally supplying a name, address and photo of the person to kill.
While non-terrorists certainly attend conservative mosques, it's hard to see how someone NOT very interested in commissioning a murder accidently sends an inquiry, specifies the job, pays a hard-to-get currency in advance, etc.
Imagine how better the world would be if all the effort, time & money spent on litigating bullshit like DMCA, piracy & patents was instead invested into solving real crimes like this.
It's possible that the police know something the father does not. I would not put it past a suicidal person to order a hit on himself.
Trying to make sure someone gets a life insurance pay out is a really common feature of a lot of stories about suicide.
If you think insurance fraud is anywhere near as criminal as murder, then I worry for whatever juridiction you live in.
It's absurd to assume the police wouldn't share such information with the victim's father. And if someone would order a hit on themselves, the police would still classify this as murder.
You're right on the other point though, if the hit actually happened there would definitely be a murder there, regardless of any suicidal actions on the client/victim's part.
Which leads to another question: If the hit website was a scam, and you tried to put a hit on yourself, could you be criminally charged with attempted murder of yourself?
lol has the author tried buying bitcoins and then tumbling them? I would not call submitting tons of ID to buy and withdrawal $5000 of bitcoin and then setting up tor and getting a tumbler working to be easy, and not getting scammed in the process. Also tor and tumblers are not necessarily fully anonymous.
Money quote right there.
I'm not sure how many people consider using this sort of thing to skirt the law. But believing in the anonymity of anything on the internet while you're skirting the law has landed many a naive person in prison. Especially if that person was within the jurisdictional reach of the US government.
I do get that Monero is ~anonymous by design.
But then, how does one buy it anonymously? All I see are exchanges that implement KYC. Using bank transfers and credit/debit cards. Are there any cash by mail exchanges? Or even local meatspace exchanging?
They appear to have an ID verification program Bitcoin exchanges are using (https://www.canadapost.ca/cpc/en/business/postal-services/di...) but I'm unable to Google up how you'd buy BTC there.
"The unbelievable tale of a fake hitman, a kill list, a darknet vigilante... and a murder": https://www.wired.co.uk/article/kill-list-dark-web-hitmen
HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18767657
The Beau Brigham case mentioned is sad[0]...guy seems to have been given a shit lot in life (bedridden with illness for 5 years), payed a token $3.50 for an assassination attempt on his stepmother, then received 3 years in jail. No one should allow their frustrations to build up to actionable murderous intent but you I can't help feel for the guy to some extent. 3 years in jail is probably not the sort of help he needed.
That article also mentions how Monteiro is a registered sex offender related to child pornography. This article[1] goes in to more detail, stating that Monteiro had "58 images of child pornography on his computer, most of which he created" and that "he committed illegal acts in order to access content on the dark web. Monteiro said he compromised and shut down websites while obtaining information about the case". Seems like these child porn sites require users to generate content to gain and maintain access.
Hard to tell from the testimony the intent and extent of good or harm Monteiro did around the child porn stuff. There should really be more published details around the sex offender registry - did someone swap nudes with their underage girlfriend or actively film abuse of their kids? There is a massive difference.
Regardless, Monteiro is doing awesome work around the murder for hire business. Really tricky field to navigate, and seemingly quite taxing and unrewarding. He published this cool public data on murder for hire statistics here [2]
[0] https://calcoasttimes.com/2019/08/15/jury-finds-beau-brigham... [1] https://calcoasttimes.com/2019/07/31/key-witness-in-slo-murd... [2] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AICLS8bS6Kh4GgRTWkSf...
Obviously a big issue would be "death confirmation" as is how do we know X person is actually dead so we can pay out to the "winner"? I imagine it could be done through some kind of majority system but what incentive would other "donators"/"would be killers" have to confirm a death has happened if they aren't the beneficiary? I'm sure someone clever could think of some way to do it...
Put people on the blockchain, obviously.
Stories like make me appreciate that someone can purchase and conceal a small firearm (in most cities). All things unequal, a person with a gun is always extremely dangerous.
The police, after all, have no actual legal requirement to protect you[1] — and never forget that.
1. https://mises.org/power-market/police-have-no-duty-protect-y...
I would agree that arming herself is a really good idea.
Suspect on linkedin I see. https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrian-fry-366693b2/
The price mismatch makes me skeptical of this story.
It was the FBI posing as a "Hell's Angel" gang member. That part was revealed pretty early on after his arrest.
Imagine the combination of perfectly untraceable money transactions with actual working low-cost swarms of facial recognition-based killbots/drones.
That's what, maybe 5-7 years away from now?
The risk here is that the cost of a hit could go down to very low costs, say between $1k to $10k per hit/murder. If it goes that low we're screwed as a society, especially if the transactions aren't traceable.
There's a lot more coming. 3D printers similarly enable access to stuff that a lot of people would like to get banned, such as firearms and accessories to them. For example, it is already possible to 3D-print a high-capacity Glock magazine completely from scratch (the only metal part is the spring, and even that is bent to shape out of a suitable steel wire using a 3D-printed jig). And it costs about $200 one-off for the printer, and <$1 per magazine thereafter. There are already laws that make doing this illegal in some locations, but again - how do you actually enforce them?
Our societies will have to either go high-tech totalitarian, or learn to live with these possibilities. I hope it's going to be the latter; after all, past societies - before the growth of administrative state with its IDs, registries, accounting, and pervasive bureaucracy - already had to deal with a situation where it was very hard to track a determined criminal. But looking at the evolution of surveillance and police power laws in modern developed democracies and China, it's probably going to be the former.
Your tangent on 3d-printing aside: If we decide to make cryptocurrencies illegal, I think that will solve like 80% of the problem. Given the tradeoffs involved, I think that's worth doing.
For example, this sentence: "The FBI has a mandate to pursue only those crimes that violate a federal statute." Sorry, but how can a crime over the Internet like this NOT violate federal statutes? It's impossible. By definition all these crimes would be pursued at the federal level.
Then there's the description of the interview where they interviewed the husband and wife together despite the husband being the main suspect. That's like pulling the plug on your server and wondering why the website's down. Beyond incredibly stupid to the point where it's hard to believe that actually happened. Those agents should themselves be charged for facilitating that murder.
I won't bother to go into the failing of allowing the identification of the British guy who placed the hit either by not allowing his ex-gf to read his messages. How dumb are these fucking cops?
The whole piece reads like a story of police, FBI, and law enforcement failings at every level. It's practically guaranteed that hits are taking place online and this is law enforcement's response? Making things worse or at the very best, fucking up investigations with their extreme stupidity.
Or maybe show it after the article has been scrolled all the way to the bottom. It's a long article and at that point you know the reader might be interested in seeing more from you.
It is a dark pattern but it is not a mistake.
I publish my papers online, they are academic and educational; I want more money. I add ads or political messages onto the website that was before purely educational because it will help me aquire money. You are no longer selling a delicious can of cola but a terrible can of worms
I suppose before you do this sort of thing you make very sure that your target is not rich enough to sue you for defamation.
Don’t forget how complicated the world is. If something looks too simple to be true, it probably is.
Ugh, fuck off. I think the big question here, the one that should be at the top of the article, is "Has a hit ever been purchased and carried out via darkweb sites", and the answer is "obviously not, lol".
> While I was working on this story, journalists at BBC News Russia confirmed the first known case of a murder being ordered on the dark web and successfully carried out by hired assassins.