For years, I have heard scary predictions that the internet/strong encryption/anonymous currency/etc. can and will be put to (mis)use by allowing people to hire contract killers anonymously.
Still, I’ve never heard of such a transaction actually happening. Also, it occurs to me that if there really were a marketplace for contract killers, it would quickly be flooded with scammers and informants to the point where it would be basically worthless to a bona fide would-be customer.
On the other hand, I recently read about a web site called “Silk Road” where people pretty much openly (but anonymously) deal drugs. To be sure, one can observe that contract killing is taken a lot more seriously by law enforcement than drug dealing. And that drug dealing entails a lot more repeat business so there is greater opportunity to build trust. But are those such great obstacles?
Anyway, my question is how likely contract killing by anonymous internet transaction is to become a real problem? Why does it not happen now and are circumstances likely to change?
If such a site existed, then police could hire a killer to kill someone who will be at a certain place at a certain time, and then arrest the killer when he showed up to do the deed. And the killers would have no way of knowing that their employers were cops, because they’d be protected by the same anonymity that’s protecting the “legitimate” customers. You can anonymize and encrypt the monetary transactions all you want, but until there’s a way to virtualize the killing itself, it’ll never work.
Silk Road isn’t as foolproof as the operators or journalists would have you believe, people who purchase from the site, even using an anonymous and encrypted currency, like Buttcoin, have been and do get caught, you have to ship the “products” after all.
And those anonymous and encrypted currencies, like Buttcoin, aren’t really as anonymous or secure as the promoters of the currency would like you to believe.
Like MPB suggests, there’s no way You’re going to get refund if the guy decides to not to do it. And why to do it if one has gotten the money already ( and no-one’s going to do it on credit - how the killer would know whom he should charge ). With total anonymity no-one is going to trust no-one when stakes are this high.
Also: think about how much a contract killer would have to charge.
If you’re going to take up a risky occupation like that, you’ll want to be paid well. Let’s say at least $100k a year net. And your overheads will be high: money laundering, maintaining fake identities, some kind of fake job, taxes on your laundered income. So you’d probably need to bring in something like 3 times your desired income. Call it $300k a year in revenue minimum.
How many murders do you think you can get away with every year, without bringing the police to your door? 3 or 4? That means you’ll need to charge something like $100k per job.
So your potential customer base is immediately limited to people who (a) want someone killed, and (b) can afford to spend $100k. Not merely that, but they’ll have to be able to come up with the money in a way that can’t be traced or discovered. If someone’s worst enemy dies suddenly or disappears in mysterious circumstances, the police will investigate. And a large chunk of cash withdrawn from a suspect’s bank account a few weeks prior will require some explaining. That means the customer will have to be someone so rich that $100k can easily vanish in their normal spending habits.
That’s a very small market.
You might be tempted to think that it still happens. But remember, it has to happen repeatedly. Every few months, year after year, the enemies of extraordinarily rich people keep dying or disappearing in suspicious circumstances. Without a single murder being traced back to the killer or their employers.
And that’s just one killer. If it’s a lucrative trade, there will be competition.
I can’t find the lecture with the demonstration of Buttcoin traffic analysis, but…
Using the public block chain it is possible to trace transfers, and with a little bit of info (which Buttcoin users are happy to give away, namely a wallet address) you can trace the source and destination of transfers.
It’s only going to get worse as the anti-money laundering measures begin to hit the exchanges…MtGOX now requires full AML-KYC compliance, and the SEC is investigating Buttcoin securities fraud and Ponzi schemes. The FSA is rumoured to have forced the shut down of the GLBSE too…
So, don’t expect to remain anonymous for long if you want to exchange your Buttcoins for dirty, filthy fiat currency.
as thoroughly discussed in this thread, there are different versions of the net that have arguably better levels of anonymity.
while the onion networks seems like a real thing (and i used the proxy to check out the hidden wiki, saw the slew of illegal and unsavory things being offered and promptly exited), i have some real doubts about the end-game logistics of such stuff. at some point, some real names/locations will have to be given. even if you anonymously send anonymous money from an anonymous source to an anonymous hit-man, you will still, at some point have to tell them the name of the person you want killed, and that seems like it could trigger an investigation if leaked. likewise, i can’t see what would stop a cop from creating their own tor network ads and nailing you the second you hire them.
at any rate, we’d better not be giving you advice for how to get someone killed… :seriousface:
In an anonymous transaction, both parties would create a new wallet address solely for that transaction.
You can trace transactions to a given wallet address. But that’s not the same thing as tracing it to a person, which is what you seem to be implying. Nor is it a secret flaw as you suggested - the properties and limitations of Bitcoin anonymity are covered in the FAQ.
It’s irrelevant to the OP anyway. Even assuming perfectly secure anonymous communications and transactions, the whole concept is fundamentally flawed, as Chronos pointed out in post #3.
A wallet address will still be used for transactions though, and when traffic analysis was done on the block chain, guess what they found… All those addresses linked up. Most users are extremely careless is how they operate.
But the big flaw comes when you try to exchange for fiat currency, because the exchanges are now registering as financial service providers and complying with AML-KYC regulations. So the authorities will be able to trace your transactions through the block chain using the insecure transactions and data from the exchanges.
I don’t think I implied it was a deliberate flaw, just one that has arisen that no one seems to talk about.
Bitcoin is not even SUPPOSED to be anonymous unless the users want it to be. You can browse through blockchains using various online tools. However, it is possible to fully anonymise transactions on it using washers and so on - but you have to be actually look to do it. It ain’t designed for anonymity. It’s designed for other reasons.
Regarding silk road anonymity, there is nothing to stop someone from just signing up to silk road, selling drugs, and also being police, you know.
I have mentioned my own experiences with being busted using silk road on this site before, although they were nothign to do with silk road itself rather than a stupid seller (and admittedlly stupid buyer :D).
There have been attempts at anonymous weapons selling market places like silk road and they have failed (the biggest one was called “the armoury” or something like it) because they were SWARMING with law enforcement, for obvious reasons. If someone actually did a hit man service, then that would happen. OR perhaps more likely, the so called hitmen would just take the bitcoins. Why actually kill someone when you can just have the money?
This is all to do with, really, the totally dearthity of hit men in real life. If there were loads of RL hitmen and loads of RL targets then you probably could get a service going, ebay style, due to the feedback etc… but it would still not take long at all until the police stopped it. Both buyers and sellers would need to be verified as criminally violent after all, and how can you do that with anonymity?
On the other hand - I think you could quite easily start a TOR “custard pie in face” service. That would be quite fun. Hell I may even do it…
Edit: Just forgot the more important point. If you are going to hire a hitman, you are criminally speaking basically a murderer. You may as well do it yourself. And that is where mordern technology is really getting interesting. There is a fascinating web project to make a gun that can be printed by 3d printers. Once that works, then anyone in the world can download a file and make themselves a gun. I hope that it would mean state tyranny in the form of gun control, something you don’t suffer from much in the US but the rest of us put up with, is done for ever, although I have my suspicions that what is actually coming is a bunch of state repression against these marvellous technologies.
Around $11,000 it seems. (at least in Australia, 10 years ago)
A study by the Australian Institute of Criminology of 162 attempted or actual contract murders in Australia between 1989 and 2002 indicated that the most common reason for murder-for-hire was “the dissolution of an intimate relationship”. The study also found that the average payment for a “hit” was $12,700 and that the most commonly used weapons were firearms. Contract killings accounted for 2% of murders in Australia during that time period.
There are people desperate and stupid enough to murder someone for $10,000, but that’s what you’d be getting, a desperate stupid thug.
The gun is easy; the 3D printer that can print it is still a fantasy. None of the materials used by 3D printers are anywhere near strong enough to make a gun out of, and any hypothetical printer that could do it would almost certainly be far more expensive than the guns it could print: Why buy a printer to make a gun, when you could just buy the gun itself directly? And even if you do want to make your own gun for some reason, it’d be much easier to just set up a machine shop in your basement and do it directly: That technology, at least, already exists.