A controversial cyberpunk, Jim Bell proposed a highly controversial concept known as “assassination politics,” whereby a contest could be created giving a cash prize to whoever correctly predicted when a target would die. If an individual could not afford the cash prize, he or she could create a Website where people could contribute to the prize. In other words, the more hated the target—typically a politician—the more people would presumably contribute to the cash prize and the more likely somebody would create a prediction and “win” the contest. The neat thing about cryptography, Jim Bell believed, was that it could make all the predictions and cash prizes completely anonymous. That is, people could encrypt their predictions and reveal the decryption keys only after the prediction came true, thereby preventing the target from being tipped off prematurely.

See Also: Anonymous; Cryptography or “Crypto”; Cyberpunk; Decryption or Decipher; Key.