Jim Bell (born James Dalton Bell, 1958) is a contemporary American crypto-anarchist theorist and activist. Bell attracted wide attention in 1996 when he authored a notorious crypto-anarchist essay called "Assassination Politics", which detailed an elaborate assassination market in which anonymous benefactors could securely order assassinations of government officials via the Internet. Bell was targeted and identified by the Federal government of the United States as a "techno-terrorist" in 1997 and following an investigation by the Internal Revenue Service, was arrested and subsequently jailed for 11 months on felony charges of harassment and using fraudulent Social Security numbers.
While he was serving his sentence, two of Bell's acolytes succeeded in partially implementing his assassination market scheme and were also swiftly charged and jailed. After his release, Bell was subjected to heavy surveillance and was rearrested for harassment and stalking of federal agents, charged with intimidation and stalking 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. Bell was hailed by Wired in 2001 as "[o]ne of the Internet's most famous essayists" and "the world's most notorious crypto-convict". (read more...)