Some thoughts on technology and murder - When soft bodies collide with hard new truths.
1: The death camera.
With the imminent arrival of crowdfunded assasinations on the dark web, and the existence of sim enabled digital cameras, it will soon be possible for someone with 100 btc to buy a camera, code a bot to identify the subject of each of the first 10 uploaded images using facial recognition, and tell it to automatically place a bounty of 10 bitcoin on each of them.
He might do it for the giddy thrill of knowing he could kill any random stranger with a miniscule chance of being caught.
He might give it away to a charity or leave it near a high school, hoping it'll be picked up by a group of selfie-obsessed teens.
Considering the time required to locate each target, then plan and commit their murder, it's unlikely an investigator looking for a motive would suspect that a random photo taken several months earlier was an automated hit.
This idea is particularly terrifying, since one could theoretically smash the camera almost immediately after taking a selfie, and still end up being murdered.
2: Don't stand still outdoors.
Drones are becoming increasingly ubiquitous, with new features being rolled out frequently.
One terrifying application of this technology would be for an operator to mount a few dozen poisoned darts in a large pattern, (maybe a metre in diameter), fly half a kilometre directly above his target on a still day, and release them all.
The drone would be too high to hear, and its unlikely anyone would see it.
Even if the target were surrounded, shoulder to shoulder by hyper-vigilant security guards, the first anybody would know of the attack would be when the darts all landed, killing the target and most of his men. The possibilities for indiscriminately attacking large groups of people are chilling.
Multiple drones acting in concert could quickly drop hundreds of darts onto a large crowd and fly away, with minimal chance of the perpetrator being identified.
I don't know if either of these things is likely, but its fascinating to ponder, and I haven't heard either of them mentioned anywhere else. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.
Makes me feel vulnerable.
There were a couple of other ones I considered including, but didn't want to give anyone ideas. Scary =/= bad, though.
Crowd sourced assassination is much more dangerous to Kim Jung Un than it is to you.
In Bruce Sterling's book Islands in the Net an assassination was done with a drone... Before droning was cool...
The one with the pistol attached got me thinking. If you can start your projectile high enough, you don't even need any propellent.
How was it done in the book?
I think it was a gas powered flechette. Drones firing bullets or darts need a very effective amortizer for the recoil, or good aim compensation.
Yeah it won't be long. I mean, curare tipped darts, for example. Ricin...