James Dalton Bell is an American crypto-anarchist who created the idea of arranging for anonymously-sponsored assassination payments via the Internet, which he called "assassination politics". Bell was targeted and identified by the federal government of the United States as a "techno-terrorist". He was imprisoned on felony charges of tax evasion in 1997. In 2001, Wired called Bell "one of the Internet's most famous essayists" and "the world's most notorious crypto-convict".