An anarchist using the online moniker “Professor Rat” has threatened the lives
of two federal terrorism investigators in Denver, advocating that they “need
killing.” The threats name an FBI agent assigned to the local multiagency Joint
Terrorism Task Force and the government’s lead prosecutor of terrorism cases in
Colorado.
Saying that his real name was Matt Taylor and that he was 67 years old,
Professor Rat said he promotes a theory called Assassination Politics that
emerged at the periphery of cyberanarchist circles in 1997. The concept is that
of an online lottery in which people bet on a date that public figures will
die. The implication is that the lottery “winner” likely helped arrange the
death. Winnings would be paid in untraceable digital cash, which does not yet
exist. The development of digital money, and encryption software restricting
government’s ability to monitor Internet activity, are common goals among the
online anarchists and libertarians known as “cypherpunks.”
