David Friedman and assassination politics

[Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>]

So I just walked home from a party in Dupont Circle where some folks were
telling me about a talk David Friedman gave at the Cato Institute about a
week ago. (Apart from being Milt's son, David appears to be a
well-respected libertarian thinker in his own right.) I didn't have the
chance to go myself... 

Friedman, as I understand it, described how digital cash and anonymous
remailers combine to form assassination markets. An assassin can establish
a persistent anonymous identity through public key cryptography and take
bids on future contracts.

These ideas is of course not new to cypherpunks. We've been talking about
them for years. But these ideas are slowly infiltrating the DC body
politic. Assassination politics, here we come -- right, Jim? Want to give
a speech at Cato? Perhaps we can talk some IRS officials into coming...

-Declan