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...)