Also, NYT Article was http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/29/politics/29TERR.html?th
But it sounds like they've chickened out, because various people freaked
about the implications. (And they only got as far as it being
"an incentive to commit terrorism", without getting to
"a funding method for terrorism" or to "Assassination Politics".)
Not to mention the obvious problems with letting government agents bid on things like when various unwanted foreign leaders would be assassinated. Gee, maybe SEAL Team 6 can do an office bid, using anonymous cutouts of course, on when SEALs will go ashore at Bandar Abbas to liquidate the Iranian prime minister? Or maybe a CIA wet work guy can make a few extra bucks in the dead pool by correctly predicting the death of the next Vince Foster?
Besides being problematic in its own right, it also leaks information, a kind of covert covert channel, ironically. If the bids are truly untraceable (fat chance--the password scheme looked like a trival, breakable Gen 1 security system) then those with knowledge of operations can make money by using their knowledge, all untraceably.
This was obvious long before Jim Bell became infamous. Check out writings by some of us dating back to 1988.
Once again, government sets itself up as being outside the law. If I were to even make a snide remark about the assassination of You Know Who, I'd get a visit from the SS.
Fucking proof that D.C. needs to be obliterated in an act of freedom fighting. Gets rid of a passal of welfare addicts, too.
--Tim May
"Ben Franklin warned us that those who would trade liberty for a little bit of temporary security deserve neither. This is the path we are now racing down, with American flags fluttering."-- Tim May, on events following 9/11/2001
