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". He was imprisoned on felony charges of tax evasion in 1997. In 2001, Wired called Bell of the Internet's most famous essayists" and "the world's most notorious crypto-convict".
In April 1995, Bell authored the first part of a 10-part essay called "Assassination Politics", which described an assassination market in which anonymous benefactors could securely order the killings of government officials or others who are violating citizens' rights. Following an investigation by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Bell was arrested and subsequently jailed for 11 months on felony charges of harassment and using false Social Security numbers.
After his April 2000 release, Bell publicly announced that he believed that there was extensive Federal Government corruption associated with his 1997–2000 criminal case, and that he was going to research the facts and file a lawsuit. Bell filed this lawsuit in 2003. Bell was put under heavy surveillance and rearrested for harassment and stalking of federal agents. He was charged with intimidation and stalking and was convicted 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. He was released in December 2009, only to be rearrested in July 2010 for violating his supervised release conditions. Bell's parole violation hearing resulted in another sentence, and Bell was released on March 12, 2012.Release Date on BOP Site ", 2012-04-30.
Background Bell was born in Akron, Ohio and attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he earned a degree in chemistry. After graduation, he worked for Intel as an electrical engineer before founding his own computer storage device company, SemiDisk SystemsKaplan, David E., "Terrorism's next wave", U.S. News Online, November 17, 1997 in 1982. When his company closed in 1992, Bell said he developed a "phobia" of financial and tax-related issues. He had been a Libertarian Party member and described his political beliefs as anarcho-libertarian. Bell attended three meetings of the Multnomah County Common Law Court (possessing no judicial authority according to Federal government laws) in Portland, Oregon, which put government officials on trial in absentia and awarded judgements against them."Judge Delays Bell's Sentencing", The Columbian, 1997-11-21, Section ABranton, John. . The Columbian, 1997-05-20. Accessed 2008-01-14 Bell attended these meetings in order to find government 'plants' in that group. Bell subsequently became involved in a tax dispute with the Internal Revenue Service, which stated that he owed $30,000 to the federal government.
"Assassination Politics" essay From 1995 through early 1996, Bell authored an essay entitled "Assassination Politics" in which he described the idea of using digital signatures through email to create an assassination market, "predicting" the deaths of "violators of rights, usually either government employees, officeholders, or appointees". Bell also speculated that some people could use these net-based markets quite openly without encryption (Part 10 of the essay). So there were two ways theorized to operate the scheme, one complex and secure and the other more open and potentially insecure. In effect, the arrangement would create an incentive for people to assassinate corrupt government officials, offering a reward that could be claimed by someone willing to submit an entry predicting a given person's death at a particular time. If that person died at about that time, the correct bettor would win the pool money. Bell published his idea in a 10-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 was nominated for a Chrysler Award for Innovation in Design in 1998 as "an imaginative and sophisticated perspective for improving governmental accountability". Although the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that advocating violence against government officials is, in the absence of an "incitement to imminent lawless action", protected by the First Amendment,Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969) (per curiam) ("... the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action. ... "), at . the publication of "Assassination Politics" put Bell under the scrutiny of federal investigators in 1995. The Cypherpunks list archives include many references to, what became known as ' AP' and ' APster ' from 1996 onwards. The names "assassination politics" and "Jim Bell" also cropped up in the US government's pursuit and prosecution of Carl Johnson (The CJ Files). In 2001, an Australian anarchist claimed to be acting on the 'Part 10' part of "Assassination Politics". This was covered by Declan McCullagh in Wired's story titled "Online Cincy Cop Threats Probed". Later, in 2003, The Denver Post published a similar story titled "Online threats target Denver investigators – Anarchist says e-mails harmless; feds disagree". This story was written by Jim Hughes. The essay attracted interest from theorists long before and 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. Murphy claimed that assassination politics was both technically infeasible and ideologically undesirable – from an anarcho-capitalist perspective (crypto-anarchism being a form of anarcho-capitalismVernor Vinge, James Frankel. True Names: And the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier (2001), Tor Books, p.44). Others, such as research fellow at IDSA, R. Sukumaran, argue that assassination markets as suggested by Bell are perhaps technically feasible, but because they are so revolutionary, they "threaten elites" and will be made illegal. However, Sukumaran argues that AP was revived within DARPA by Poindexter with FutureMAP, an attempt to "extrapolate the Iowa Presidential markets system to the prediction of terroristic events" under the "interest of national security." Mike Huben has argued that were Assassination Politics ever to be accepted then governments would merely operate secretly (critiques of libertarianism). Almost all commentary so far has focused on the first nine parts of the essay and there is little on part 10.
Investigation, prosecution and imprisonment According to testimony by a federal agent, the federal government began infiltrating the Multnomah County Common Law Court via Steven Walsh, a government agent who attended the meetings under a false name and who even began to lead the organization. According to court documents, Bell attended three meetings of the group nearly a year after Walsh's infiltration.
In February 1997, the Internal Revenue Service acted on Bell's tax debt, docking his wages and seizing his automobile. Inside the car, investigators found bomb-making instructions, political literature, and detailed information concerning cyanide and fertilizer.
IRS officers raided Bell's home on April 1, 1997. He was arrested in May of that year,"Activist Bell Faces Sentencing Friday", The Columbian, 1997-11-20, Section B. and, in July, he 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;Branton, John. . The Columbian, 1997-05-20. Accessed 2008-01-14 Bell said that he did not believe anyone had a right to know his real Social Security number).
As part of his plea bargain, Bell pleaded guilty in July 1997 to collecting the names and home addresses of IRS employees, and the home addresses of FBI, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents and police in Clark County, Washington; Bell also accepted responsibility for conducting a stinkbomb attack in the Vancouver IRS office. He was convicted of the two low-level feloniesPainter Jr., John. "IRS Says Man From Tacoma Part of Plot ", The Oregonian, 1997-11-20, p. C02 and sentenced in December 1997 to eleven months in prison followed by three years of federal probation. As a condition of his sentence, Bell was compelled to pay, upon his release, $1,359 in restitution for the stinkbomb attack.Associated Press, "Bell gets 11 months in prison, 3 years supervised release, fine", The Oregonian, 1997-12-12. He was also subjected to three years of supervised release, during which he was barred from accessing computers and from possessing chemicals.
In Bell's June 2003 lawsuit, Bell accused the federal government of extorting the 1997 plea agreement from him.(claims 87–103) Bell asserted that when he balked at that agreement in November 1997, in part due to the government's violation of the terms, government agents instructed fellow inmate Ryan Thomas Lund to assault Bell.(claims 105–114) The lawsuit alleged that Lund did this at about 6:00 P.M. on November 25, 1997, for the purpose of intimidating Bell, and to keep Bell away from his family and the news media. Later, in an ostensibly unrelated event, Lund filed a lawsuit stating that on December 14, 1997, two days after Bell's December 12, 1997 sentencing, Lund (who was in solitary confinement at the time due to his assault on Bell) had a "slip and fall" accident while alone in his cell, ostensibly due to a wet cell floor.(claim 108) Lund had also been promised a 27-month sentence for his illegal possession of firearms and methamphetamine, when the relevant federal law required a mandatory 10-year sentence.(claim 107) Bell alleged that the sentence reduction and lawsuit payoff were engineered to reward Lund for extorting Bell. Bell claimed that he was kept under "inhumane conditions for at least ten days".
Bell further alleged in his 2003 lawsuit that a forged appeal case, number 99-30210, was entered into the court record. He stated that "Ninth Circuit Court personnel ... began corruptly falsifying, forging, and improperly adding to and deleting from the Ninth Circuit Court documentary record ... with regard to appeal #99-30210." Bell's October 2004 amendment further alleges that, a handwritten note, "purportedly signed by Bell, but not in Bell's handwriting style", was forged to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. He alleges that this notice of appeal was filed around June 20, 1999 (claim 505), and that, "... Ninth Circuit personnel agreed to and did continually add false records to that docket, and at various times they deleted some of those false records and substituted new false records, for the purposes of concealing the true events and for continuing to obstruct Bell's access to justice and his constitutional rights." (Claim 510) In his lawsuit, Bell seeks to establish that over a dozen government employees were guilty of numerous felonies.
Release and conviction