Not sure why, but yesterday I had it in my brain that nominations were by
callarea and not east/west.
My comments and suggestions remain the same:
1) Pick the best 5 operators from east and west regardless of club
membership. If every club only picks their own members, then we will have
a big fat tie with everyone getting one vote.
2) Do not pick more than one member from our own club.
3) Ask other clubs not selected as part of this process for their input on
this process.
73
Bill, W4AN
Now back to doing one thing well instead of two things poorly. SO1R.
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>From Goran Fagerstrom" <tjanste@algonet.se Tue May 8 15:31:55 2001
From: Goran Fagerstrom" <tjanste@algonet.se (Goran Fagerstrom)
Subject: [CQ-Contest] Overemphasizing e-QSL security
Message-ID: <006301c0d7cb$c4be1b60$65d4fea9@gf>
Ham friends,
The emphasis on unbreakable digital signatures of e-QSLs amazes me. In
any society, the amount of police should have some relation to the
incidence of crime, as well as to the risk of detection and the
punishment. The cost of security measures - safes, detection
procedures, guards - should also be commensurate with the seriousness
of the crime.
-- All this makes one wonder how many DXCC applicants (since DXCC
seems to be what the discussions centers on) would even consider
forging QSLs? This is the incidence of crime, or percentage of
criminals in a society. In our case, very low.
-- Suppose awards committee(s) conduct spot checks, asking the issuer
of an e-card if the QSO took place. This is influencing the risk of
detection. (It could even be done by an automated e-mailing procedure,
if the issuer supplies his e-mail address. The rate of spot checks
could increase at the upper echelons of the DXCC ladder and for rare
countries.)
-- Suppose any forger (one of the few) who is caught is banned from
the award forever and published in QST for eternal shame. This is
increasing the punishment.
Would it still be worth-while to ponder the depths of cryptography,
mandating a single digital signature procedure, etc. After all, we are
hams. I feel that if someone obtains his DXCC by dishonest means, may
he display it on his wall and know in his heart what he has done. In
no way does this "influence the integrity of the DXCC program" etc.
We all know countries have existed and still exist where the
abovementioned correspondence between crime and police was *not*
observed. We know what they are called - police states - and that they
are not so nice to live in.
At SK0UX, I took part in implementing possibly the first e-QSL server,
which still works, and we are still improving it trying to strike a
good balance between various factors, including "security". Then, we
advocated letting many solutions come forward, as has indeed happened
with whole sites dedicated to e-qsls. We haven't had time to take
part in the committee on e-QSLs that was set up, but sincerely hope
that the committee in conscious of the risk of the security thing
going overboard.
Sincerely,
Goran/SM0DRD
tjanste@algonet.se
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