[kj] This ought to send Jaz off on a rampage

[Phillipps Marc]

>"For instance," Mr. Wyden said, "you may think early on that Prime Minister
>X is going to be assassinated. So you buy the futures contracts for 5 cents
>each. As more people begin to think the person's going to be assassinated,
>the cost of the contract could go up, to 50 cents.

Can I put $50 on Dubya being declared clueless by the end of the year please
. . 

Marc.

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Alexander  Smith [SMTP:vassifer@earthlink.net]
> Sent:	Tuesday, July 29, 2003 4:33 PM
> To:	gathering@misera.net
> Subject:	[kj] This ought to send Jaz off on a rampage
> 
> 
>  
> 
> Pentagon Prepares a Futures Market on Terror Attacks
> By CARL HULSE
> 
> ASHINGTON, July 28 - The Pentagon office that proposed spying
> electronically
> on Americans to monitor potential terrorists has a new experiment. It is
> an
> online futures trading market, disclosed today by critics, in which
> anonymous speculators would bet on forecasting terrorist attacks,
> assassinations and coups.
> Advertisement
>     
>     
> 
> Traders bullish on a biological attack on Israel or bearish on the chances
> of a North Korean missile strike would have the opportunity to bet on the
> likelihood of such events on a new Internet site established by the
> Defense
> Advanced Research Projects Agency. 
> 
> The Pentagon called its latest idea a new way of predicting events and
> part
> of its search for the "broadest possible set of new ways to prevent
> terrorist attacks." Two Democratic senators who reported the plan called
> it
> morally repugnant and grotesque. The senators said the program fell under
> the control of Adm. John M. Poindexter, President Ronald Reagan's national
> security adviser.
> 
> One of the two senators, Byron L. Dorgan of North Dakota, said the idea
> seemed so preposterous that he had trouble persuading people it was not a
> hoax. "Can you imagine," Mr. Dorgan asked, "if another country set up a
> betting parlor so that people could go in - and is sponsored by the
> government itself - people could go in and bet on the assassination of an
> American political figure?" 
> 
> After Mr. Dorgan and his fellow critic, Ron Wyden of Oregon, spoke out,
> the
> Pentagon sought to play down the importance of a program for which the
> Bush
> administration has sought $8 million through 2005. The White House also
> altered the Web site so that the potential events to be considered by the
> market that were visible earlier in the day at
> www.policyanalysismarket.org
> could no longer be seen.
> 
> But by that time, Republican officials in the Senate were privately
> shaking
> their heads over the planned trading. One top aide said he hoped that the
> Pentagon had a good explanation for it.
> 
> The Pentagon, in defending the program, said such futures trading had
> proven
> effective in predicting other events like oil prices, elections and movie
> ticket sales.
> 
> "Research indicates that markets are extremely efficient, effective and
> timely aggregators of dispersed and even hidden information," the Defense
> Department said in a statement. "Futures markets have proven themselves to
> be good at predicting such things as elections results; they are often
> better than expert opinions."
> 
> According to descriptions given to Congress, available at the Web site and
> provided by the two senators, traders who register would deposit money
> into
> an account similar to a stock account and win or lose money based on
> predicting events.
> 
> "For instance," Mr. Wyden said, "you may think early on that Prime
> Minister
> X is going to be assassinated. So you buy the futures contracts for 5
> cents
> each. As more people begin to think the person's going to be assassinated,
> the cost of the contract could go up, to 50 cents.
> 
> "The payoff if he's assassinated is $1 per future. So if it comes to pass,
> and those who bought at 5 cents make 95 cents. Those who bought at 50
> cents
> make 50 cents."
> 
> The senators also suggested that terrorists could participate because the
> traders' identities will be unknown.
> 
> "This appears to encourage terrorists to participate, either to profit
> from
> their terrorist activities or to bet against them in order to mislead U.S.
> intelligence authorities," they said in a letter to Admiral Poindexter,
> the
> director of the Terrorism Information Awareness Office, which the
> opponents
> said had developed the idea. 
> 
> The initiative, called the Policy Analysis Market, is to begin registering
> up to 1,000 traders on Friday. It is the latest problem for the advanced
> projects agency, or Darpa, a Pentagon unit that has run into controversy
> for
> the Terrorism Information Office. Admiral Poindexter once described a
> sweeping electronic surveillance plan as a way of forestalling terrorism
> by
> tapping into computer databases to collect medical, travel, credit and
> financial records. 
> 
> Worried about the reach of the program, Congress this year prohibited what
> was called the Total Information Awareness program from being used against
> Americans. Its name was changed to the Terrorism Information Awareness
> program.
> 
> This month, the Senate agreed to block all spending on the program. The
> House did not. Mr. Wyden said he hoped that the new disclosure about the
> trading program would be the death blow for Admiral Poindexter's plan.
> 
> The Pentagon did not provide details of the program like how much money
> participants would have to deposit in accounts. Trading is to begin on
> Oct.
> 1, with the number of participants initially limited to 1,000 and possibly
> expanding to 10,000 by Jan. 1.
> 
> "Involvement in this group prediction process should prove engaging and
> may
> prove profitable," the Web site said.
> 
> The overview of the plan said the market would focus on the economic,
> civil
> and military futures of Egypt, Jordan, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Saudi Arabia,
> Syria and Turkey and the consequences of United States involvement with
> those nations. The creators of the market envision other trappings of
> existing markets like derivatives.
> 
> In a statement, Darpa said the trading idea was "currently a small
> research
> program that faces a number of major technical challenges and
> uncertainties."
> 
> "Chief among these," the agency said, "are: Can the market survive and
> will
> people continue to participate when U.S. authorities use it to prevent
> terrorist attacks? Can futures markets be manipulated by adversaries?"
> 
> Mr. Dorgan and Mr. Wyden called for an immediate end to the project and
> said
> they would use its existence to justify cutting off financial support for
> the overall effort. In the letter to Admiral Poindexter, they called the
> initiative a "wasteful and absurd" use of tax dollars.
> 
> "The American people want the federal government to use its resources
> enhancing our security, not gambling on it," the letter said.
> 
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