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Jim Bell

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James Dalton Bell
StatusIncarcerated
Other namesJim Bell
Criminal chargeHigh treason,[1] obstruction of government officers,[1] intimidation, fraud, tax evasion,[2] violation of probation conditions,[3] stalking a federal officer.
Penalty11 months imprisonment
10 years imprisonment

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".[2] 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.[2] Bell was hailed by Wired in 2001 as "[o]ne of the Internet's most famous essayists"[5] and "the world's most notorious crypto-convict".[6]

In 1996, Bell authored a notorious crypto-anarchist essay called "Assassination Politics", which detailed an elaborate assassination market in which anonymous benefactors could securely order hits of government officials. Following an investigation by the Internal Revenue Service, he was arrested and subsequently jailed for 11 months on felony charges of harassment and using fraudulent Social Security numbers. While he was serving his sentence, two of Bell's acolytes succeeded in partially implementing his assassination market scheme and were too swiftly charged and jailed. After his release, Bell was subjected to heavy surveillance and was rearrested for harassment and stalking of federal agents, charged with intimidation and stalking and again imprisoned, this time for a decade-long sentence. Bell protested vociferously against the conduct of the trial, going so far as to file civil lawsuits against two judges, at least two prosecutors, his former probation officers and his defense attorneys, but ultimately to no avail.

Background

Bell was born in Akron, Ohio and attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he earned a degree in chemistry.[4] After graduation, he worked for Intel before founding his own computer storage device company, SemiDisk Systems, in 1982.[4][7] He was arrested in 1989 for illegally manufacturing methamphetamine, but pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of failing to report receiving a controlled chemical,[8][9] for which he paid a fine of $2,500.[10] When his company closed in 1992, Bell claimed to have developed a "phobia" of tax-related issues and became a Libertarian Party member, describing his political beliefs as anarcho-libertarian.[4] He involved himself with the militia movement and with the Multnomah County Common Law Court in Portland, which put government officials on trial in absentia and awarded judgements against them.[10][9] Bell subsequently became involved in a tax dispute with the Internal Revenue Service who adjudged that he owed $30,000 to the federal government.[8]

"Assassination Politics"

Economist Bob Murphy, anarcho-capitalist critic of Bell's assassination politics.

In 1996, Bell authored an essay entitled "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.[11] 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 titled "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".[2] 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,[12] and "Assassination Politics" put Bell under the scrutiny of federal investigators in late 1996. The essay continued to attract interest from anarchist theorists long after its author's legal entanglements; Libertarian economist Bob Murphy criticised the assassination politics scheme in a pair of articles titled "The Politics of Destruction" in 2002.[13] 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[14]).

Investigation, prosecution and imprisonment

In February 1997 the Internal Revenue Service acted on Bell's debt, docking his wages and seizing his 10-year old automobile.[8] Inside the car, investigators found bomb-making instructions, radical political literature and detailed information concerning cyanide and fertilizer, the latter of which was a key ingredient in the Oklahoma City bombings, a militia-linked atrocity perpetrated in 1995.[8] At the time, lack of evidence that Bell intended to harm anyone prevented investigators from bringing charges, but when, four weeks later, he stinkbombed their Vancouver offices with a propanethiol-soaked welcome mat, the IRS resolved to act in fear that Bell might escalate his actions.[8]

IRS officers 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[9] (Bell had previously boasted of producing sarin of the type used in the 1995 attack on the Tokyo subway ).[8] He was subsequently arrested in May of that year,[15] 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[16]).

During the trial, the government's lead investigator compared Bell with Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and anarcho-primitivist bomber Theodore Kaczynski.[9] As part of his plea bargain, Bell pled guilty in July 2007 to collecting the names and home addresses of IRS employees,[9] and the home addresses of FBI, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents and police in Clark County;[17] Bell also accepted responsibility for conducting the stinkbomb attack in the Vancouver IRS office and for the assassination market scheme.[8] He was convicted of the two low-level felonies[17] and sentenced in December 1997 to eleven months in prison followed by three years of probation.[18] As a condition of his sentence, Bell was compelled to pay, upon his release, $1,359 in restitution for the stinkbomb attack.[19] He was also subjected to three years of supervised release, during which he was barred from accessing computers and from possessing chemicals.[3]

Acolytes

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.[12] Federal investigators issued a warrant for Johnson's arrest in August 1998.[20] In spite of government attempts to link Johnson's case to his, then-incarcerated Bell asserted that Johnson was not a close friend, but "more of a vague Internet acquaintance than anything else".[12]

I'm here out in the open…I'm putting forth the basic James Bell dream, which is that people can put forth freedom on the Internet. This is a tool that was lying on the ground and I picked it up.

— Mark Taylor, quoted in Wired[21]

Left-anarchist Mark Taylor, another cypherpunk and acolyte of Bell's, declared in May 2001 that he was advancing assassination politics by taunting Ohio and California police online.[22] He began an initiative called Operation Soft Drill — a term previously referred to by Bell — with the stated intention of intimidating police and corporate polluters into respecting human rights.[21] Taylor was arrested and jailed by Australian police a month later on charges of vandalizing a McDonald's restaurant.[22]

Release, harassment and conviction

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.

Jim Bell in interview with Wired,[2] on 2000-11-11.

Bell served his prison sentence at a federal medium-security prison in Phoenix, Arizona,[19] from which he was released in April 2000.[23][12] He was rearrested in June of the same year on the charge of violating several of his 36 probation conditions, and was returned in November to a federal detention center at SeaTac, Washington.[3][23] Bell had conducted sousveillance against Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents "to let them know that surveillance can be done in both directions", and compiled six months of evidence of what he alleged was illegal surveillance of him by a government agency.[23] In the days leading up to his arrest he claimed that the agency had unlawfully installed a covert listening device in his home and a tracking device in his car,[23] something the ATF admitted doing during the subsequent trial.[24]

Bell was charged with violating 18 USC 2281, a law prohibiting the intimidation of family members of federal agents and some forms of stalking.[23] During the trial, the judge sealed the entire court file, forbid the defense from issuing subpoenas to witnesses, granted the prosecution significant latitude in making negative suggestions about Bell's character and refused requests for a mistrial.[25] Following his conviction, Bell renewed his attempts at firing his court-appointed lawyer, appealing his case to the Supreme Court of the United States,[6] and filing civil lawsuits against those he alleges were involved in an orchestrated conspiracy to deny him a fair trial and an unbiased, court-appointed defense counsel; his targets included two judges, at least two prosecutors, and his former probation officers and defense attorneys.[5] After being moved from SeaTac, he served a portion of his ten year sentence in the same federal prison in Lompoc, California that once held convicted "cracker" Kevin Mitnick.[5]

References

  1. ^ a b Painter Jr., John. " IRS says suspect discussed sabotage". The Oregonian, 1997-05-20, Metro Section P-1.
  2. ^ a b c d e McCullagh, Declan (2000-11-11). "Crypto-Convict Won't Recant". Wired. Retrieved 2007-11-07. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  3. ^ a b c Westfall, Bruce. "Federal Marshals Arrest James Bell", The Columbian.
  4. ^ a b c d McCullagh, Declan (2001-04-09). "Cypherpunk's Free Speech Defense". Wired. Retrieved 2008-01-14. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  5. ^ a b c McCullagh, Declan (2001-12-01). "Gay Site Halts Death 'Advice'". Wired. Retrieved 2008-01-14. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  6. ^ a b McCullagh, Declan (2001-04-06). "Assassinate this". Wired. Retrieved 2008-01-14. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  7. ^ McCullagh, Declan (2002-05-25). "Busy Year for Big Brother". Wired. Retrieved 2008-01-14. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  8. ^ a b c d e f g Kaplan, David E., "Terrorism's next wave", U.S. News Online, November 17, 1997
  9. ^ a b c d e "Judge Delays Bell's Sentencing", The Columbian, 1997-11-21, Section A
  10. ^ a b Branton, John. "'They're seeing demons in dark,' says Bell's mother". The Columbian, 1997-05-20. Accessed 2008-01-14
  11. ^ Bell, James Dalton. 1996. "Assassination Politics." In Winn Schwartau ed., Information Warfare (2nd ed., pp.420–425. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press.
  12. ^ a b c d Stamper, Chris (1999-04-20). "Guilty Verdict for Cypherpunk". Wired. Retrieved 2008-01-14. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  13. ^ Murphy, Bob (2002-07-11). "The Politics of Destruction". Anti-State.com. Retrieved 2008-01-13. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
    Murphy, Bob (2002-08-22). "The Politics of Destruction". Anti-State.com. Retrieved 2008-01-13. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  14. ^ Vernor Vinge, James Frankel. True Names: And the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier (2001), Tor Books, p.44
  15. ^ "Activist Bell Faces Sentencing Friday", The Columbian, 1997-11-20, Section B.
  16. ^ Branton, John. "Feds accuse Bell of using fibers to shut down computers". The Columbian, 1997-05-20. Accessed 2008-01-14
  17. ^ a b Painter Jr., John. "IRS Says Man From Tacoma Part of Plot ", The Oregonian, 1997-11-20, p. C02
  18. ^ 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)
  19. ^ a b Associated Press, "Bell gets 11 months in prison, 3 years supervised release, fine", The Oregonian, 1997-12-12.
  20. ^ Ludlow, Peter (2001). Crypto Anarchy, Cyberstates, and Pirate Utopias. Cambridge: MIT. ISBN 9780262621519.
  21. ^ a b McCullagh, Declan (2001-05-15). "Online Cincy Cop Threats Probed". Wired. Retrieved 2008-01-14. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  22. ^ a b McCullagh, Declan (2001-06-09). "Ashcroft's Hard Line on Hardcore". Wired. Retrieved 2008-01-14. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  23. ^ a b c d e McCullagh, Declan (2000-11-21). "'Cyber-Terrorist' Jailed Again". Wired. Retrieved 2008-01-14. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  24. ^ McCullagh, Declan (2001-04-06). "ATF Admits Tracking Jim Bell". Wired. Retrieved 2008-01-14. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  25. ^ McCullagh, Declan (2001-04-05). "DOJ: Cypherpunk Threatened Feds". Wired. Retrieved 2008-01-14. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

External links

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