Re: [gnso-igo-ingo] Nature of the problem / Evidence of harm discussion

[Alan Greenberg <alan.greenberg@xxxxxxxxx>]

Chris, if this entire endeavour was about providing protection for 
the Red Cross and related organizations, I am pretty sure we would 
not be embroiled in the current discussions. Whether we could in fact 
stop the kind of fraud you are describing is another matter, since I 
am quite sure that a good con artist could capitalize on a tsunami 
with violating whatever rules we put in place. But surely we could 
make it a bit harder for them.
But it is not just the Red Cross we are looking at and that is what 
makes the discussion and decisions far more difficult.
Alan

At 07/02/2013 08:30 PM, Christopher Lamb wrote:
> Dear Alan and Thomas,
>
> One thing you might like to have in mind is an experience we had in 
> IFRC after the 2004 Tsunamis.  A web fraud based on abuse of the 
> redcross name was brought to the attention of the FBI because, among 
> other things, it asserted a fax address in Los Angeles.  The 
> response was that they wouldn't take action until and unless we 
> produced evidence of an American citizen victim.  We pointed out (to 
> sympathetic people in the State Department) that this wasn't the 
> point at all, and furthermore that by the time we had a "victim" the 
> game would have been lost.  These fraudsters set out to get their 
> money in the first couple of days after the disaster strikes, when 
> it's still newsworthy, and the victim doesn't usually know that s/he 
> is a victim at all for much longer than that.  The FBI remained 
> unimpressed, but we got what we needed in the end from Interpol 
> after the intervention of a police force in another country named in the fraud.
> This is, however, something of a distraction from the point about 
> the provision of protection to those organisations which receive it 
> at all other levels of public information 
> dissemination.  International and national law and the obligations 
> on governments therefrom are critically important considerations, 
> and were obligations accepted by governments for specific reasons 
> (for example in the 1949 Geneva Conventions) without the need for 
> any discussion of the quality of evidence of harm.
> All the best
>
> Chris
>
> -----Original Message----- From: Alan Greenberg
> Sent: Friday, February 08, 2013 10:18 AM
> To: Thomas Rickert ; gnso-igo-ingo@xxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [gnso-igo-ingo] Nature of the problem / Evidence of 
> harm discussion
>
> 1. Yes, but I think the question is phrased slightly incorrectly.
> Your wording could be taken to mean that we would only grant
> protections to a particular organization if they can demonstrate
> previous harm. My interest is to try to understand the range of harms
> and protective actions taken prior to trying to establish the
> criteria for granting special protections.
>
> 2. Not applicable.
>
> At 07/02/2013 03:18 PM, Thomas Rickert wrote:
>
> > All,
> > following up on yesterday's call I would like to ask all of you to 
> > answer either of the following questions. As you will remember, 
> > there was some debate surrounding the question if and what evidence 
> > of harm needs to be presented to the group and Chuck proposed the 
> > following questions, which I have modified a bit:
> > 1. Are there those who want to see evidence of harm before 
> > considering granting protections?
> > 2. Are there those who are requiring protections who are unwilling 
> > to provide information? If so, are you offering other or a subset 
> > of the information required according to the survey sheet.
> > Please answer the question by next Tuesday.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Thomas