Re: Adopt‐an‐Haitian‐Internet‐technician‐or‐facility

[Eric Brunner-Williams <brunner () nic-naa net>]

Steve,

Hmm. Are there other requests like this one? I suppose the pilot's 
associations may be trying to raise money to fix the secondary 
airfields -- a note from a member of Congress who's significant other 
has been shuttling a Cessna and stand-alone early relief payloads from 
the US VI to secondary fields in Haiti made me think of that as 
another social affiliation targeted activity. I'm sure others are 
possible.

There is the general problem of control, one reason the IRC contacted 
CORE was to investigate a .redcross so that they could reduce their 
loss to disaster fraud. Of course, we have to wait on ICANN to get a 
.redcross or .icrc or ... .ouch into the root so that it becomes more 
generally useful as a trusted sink of private and public packetized cash.

Then there is the specific problem of opportunity. We didn't wait 
until FEMA authorized us to begin work when Katrina impacted the NOLA 
and surrounding area, and if had, more would have died than did. As 
we, who are not in the humanitarian relief line of work, look at the 
loss of our peers, do we act, or do we leave specific tasks to the 
general relief agencies?

I don't have a "best answer" and I'm aware that aid is difficult, for 
all involved.

Eric


On 2/8/10 12:47 PM, Steven Bellovin wrote:
> As a matter of form, how might one check out the legitimacy of requests like this?  (No, I don't think this one is 
> fake...)