Following an investigation by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Bell was arrested and subsequently jailed for 11 months on felony charges of harassment and using false Social Security numbers.
After his April 2000 release, Bell publicly announced that he believed that there was extensive Federal Government corruption associated with his 1997–2000 criminal case, and that he was going to research the facts and file a lawsuit.
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.
In effect, the arrangement would create an incentive for people to assassinate corrupt government officials,[13] offering a reward that could be claimed by someone willing to submit an entry predicting a given person's death at a particular time.
Described by Wired as "an unholy mix of encryption, anonymity, and digital cash to bring about the ultimate annihilation of all forms of government", the essay was nominated for a Chrysler Award for Innovation in Design in 1998 as "an imaginative and sophisticated perspective for improving governmental accountability".
[2] Although the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that advocating violence against government officials is, in the absence of an "incitement to imminent lawless action", protected by the First Amendment,[15] the publication of "Assassination Politics" put Bell under the scrutiny of federal investigators in 1995.
The names "assassination politics" and "Jim Bell" also cropped up in the US government's pursuit and prosecution of Carl Johnson (The CJ Files).
[16] Murphy claimed that assassination politics was both technically infeasible and ideologically undesirable – from an anarcho-capitalist perspective (crypto-anarchism being a form of anarcho-capitalism[17]).
Others, such as R. Sukumaran, argue that assassination markets as suggested by Bell are perhaps technically feasible, but because they are so revolutionary, they "threaten elites" and will be made illegal.
However, Sukumaran argues that AP was revived within DARPA by Poindexter with FutureMAP, an attempt to "extrapolate the Iowa Presidential markets system to the prediction of terroristic events" under the "interest of national security.
[13] As part of his plea bargain, Bell pleaded guilty in July 1997 to collecting the names and home addresses of IRS employees,[10] and the home addresses of FBI, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents and police in Clark County, Washington;[22] Bell also accepted responsibility for conducting a stinkbomb attack in the Vancouver IRS office.
[32][33] He was rearrested in June of the same year on the charge of violating several of his 36 probation conditions, and was returned in November 2000 to a federal detention center at SeaTac, Washington following a search of his home that Bell called a "disguised burglary".
[25][33][34] Bell had conducted sousveillance against Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents, using public databases and legally obtained CD-ROMs,[35] "to let them know that surveillance can be done in both directions.
[13][37] Journalist Declan McCullagh wrote, "[Bell] says, and a good number of observers agree, that the Feds are prosecuting him for doing what an investigative reporter does: Compiling information from publicly available databases, documenting what's happening, and so on.
"[38] Declan McCullagh asserts that during the trial, the judge sealed the entire court file, forbade the defense from issuing subpoenas to witnesses, granted the prosecution significant latitude in making negative suggestions about Bell's character, and refused requests for a mistrial.
[37] Following the conviction, Jim Bell renewed his attempts at firing his court-appointed lawyer, appealing his case to the Supreme Court,[4] and filing civil lawsuits against those he alleges were involved in an orchestrated conspiracy to deny him a fair trial and an unbiased, court-appointed defense counsel; his targets included two judges, at least two prosecutors, and his former probation officers and defense attorneys.
[3] In February 2012,[40] Bell applied for a patent on an invention which would improve fiber optic communication speeds and assist in transmitting long distances.