At 09:06 PM 5/27/2008, Alfred Frugoli wrote:
>Granted, this doesn't address the problem that Pete is trying to get
>around. While I agree with Pete's philosophy, I just don't see that
>happening quickly. ARRL has invested a lot in the current
>system. Dumping one of its major "founding philosophies" isn't going to
>be done without considerable thought and deliberation.
I think that what I'm suggesting falls well short of destroying LOTW's
security and credibility. It's always been a lot more likely that a Romeo
would claim to be somewhere he wasn't, than that any given operator would
falsify both his own log and the corroborating logs in order to acquire
DXCC credits he wasn't entitled to.
When you add the element of a cheater's having to submit the multiple bogus
logs to a major contest sponsor, who will be making the logs public, the
scenario becomes vanishingly improbable. All it takes is one person to
blow the whistle - "I know that 7Q7AA was on home leave in England during
the contest, so he couldn't have made the QSO." The contest sponsors look
for the one station that worked him, start checking his other QSOs, and
then hang him from the nearest yardarm.
I'm hoping that there is some creative thinking going on at ARRL. They
have a big problem with DXCC processing, and a recurrent need for
operations like LOTW and awards to pay for themselves. Adding one more
person to the job of checking paper QSLs is a fundamentally inadequate
step, as W5VX said. At most, accepting verified QSOs from a major contest
sponsor - even from its own Contest department - would amount to a limited
and justifiable exception to the normal security criteria. If they can
address this problem, get additional revenue, save DXers lots of money in
the process, and also stimulate contest activity, it's hard for me to see
the downside.
73, Pete N4ZR
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