Shared Responsibility

Judge Knot:  State your name and occupation.

Ben Gineer:  Your honor, I’m Ben Gineer, a retired defense contractor, homesteader and Sunday School teacher.

Prosecutor:  Mr. Gineer, where were you on the evening of August 24th, 2015?

Ben Gineer:  Uh, I was runnin’ some experiments on the gun range at my farm in southern Virginia.

Prosecutor:  Is this your evil black assault rifle?

Ben Gineer:  Well now, that sure looks like my AR-15.  Not many of ‘em have those crash test dummy reference cross-hairs painted on ‘em like that…

Prosecutor:  Mr. Gineer, police forensics tell us that this rifle has your finger prints and it fired a bullet that was found lodged in the head of a man found dead on your property that night.

Ben Gineer:  Yeah, I kin believe that…

Prosecutor:  So you admit that you shot him?

Ben Gineer:  No, no.  I wasn’t in control of the weapon at that time.

Prosecutor:  Not in control?  What are you talking about?

Ben Gineer:  Well, I had that rifle set up on a remote control stand.  It was rigged so that folks out on the web could control it by consensus using real time blockchain technolergy.

Prosecutor:  Did you see what happened?

Ben Gineer:  Yeah, I did.  My wife Ethel was just comin’ back from a trip inta town ta git herself a snow cone.  She was gittin’ outa her car when that fella came streakin’ out of the corn field headin’ straight fer her.  I hollered over the hog callin' mike, “Look out, Ethel!”  But it was too late.  He’d already done pulled a knife on her. Next thing I knowed, his brains was splattered all over her favorite housedress.  She weren’t none too happy about that, let me tell ya!

Prosecutor:  Do you expect us to believe that you let perfect strangers out on the web fire a live weapon in an area where your family is coming and going?

Ben Gineer:  Nobody’s perfect.  ‘Sides, we interview everbody who wants ta perticipate jes ta make sure no whackos are among ‘em.  An iffin' a whacko did somehow get through our screenin', it don’t make no never mind.  Ya see, the system requires everbody ta vote on what gits shot.

Prosecutor:  Voting!  That’s down right irresponsible!

Ben Gineer: (losing his fake country accent) Not at all.  This is a carefully controlled experiment gathering data to support an unsolicited proposal for DARPA, er, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.  The whole gun range is fenced off with lots of warning signs and alarms to let people know that they are approaching an active test range.  The teleoperated gun is safer that if it were in the hands of any single human, since 51% of the operators must agree on the target and the authorization to fire.

Prosecutor:  So all we have to do is find out who the last person to vote was and prosecute them for the cold-blooded murder of that poor knife-wielding victim.

Ben Gineer:  Won’t do your no good. All the transactions on the blockchain are anonymous. There are no records for you to subpoena.  That’s the whole point. We’re trying to show that the psychological problems experienced by soldiers returning from wars can be mitigated if they are never forced to unilaterally take a human life.  There’s psychological safety in shared responsibility and they can always tell themselves they weren’t the one who cast the deciding vote to fire.  Sort of like assuring a firing squad that one of them has been issued a blank cartridge...or like voting with 30 million other people for someone else to steal from 30 million other people for you.  The system is engineered for complete anonymity and safety from all responsibility.   

Prosecutor:  So you’re saying there is no way to ever prove who did it?

Ben Gineer:  Not beyond a reasonable doubt.

Judge Knot:  Case dismissed.