DIEM: Digital emblems for network resources of aid organizations

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Because the digital space has long been a regular theater of war, the International Red Cross also wants to see its digital resources protected. While hospitals are protected by Red Cross emblems, the aid organization's IT resources are to be identified by new DIEM digital emblems in future. However, the start of the necessary standardization work was postponed once again at the 121st meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in Dublin, as there is disagreement about how narrow the circle of beneficiaries should be.

Representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) campaigned on Tuesday in Dublin for the rapid launch of a working group. This is to draft a data format and procedure for issuing and integrating the digital protection markers. The idea is that third parties can then check whether a digital resource, from the website to hospital IT, is marked in accordance with international humanitarian law or other standards and is therefore "protected and respected", as Samit D'Cunha from the ICRC explained.

Technology building blocks in place

The Red Cross/Red Crescent member organization's conference of delegates just last week confirmed the need for standardization efforts, D'Cunha said. Together with representatives of several national Red Cross organizations, UNESCO, which is responsible for the protection of World Heritage Sites, also attended an informal meeting. It was the second meeting on the topic.

Technical solutions for the realization of such digital emblems and their validation by third parties already exist. Both certificate solutions and DNS approaches were discussed on the fringes of the meeting. Michael Prorock, one of the authors in the Secure Patterns for Internet Credentials (Spice) working group, pointed out that mechanisms for the verification of digital credentials for third parties are already being developed there. According to Prorock, an application example also brought into play in DIEM, the inspection of goods at customs, is being worked on there.

Digital assets, analog assets?

Daniel Kahn-Gillmore from the American Civil Liberty Union argued that the new working group should focus on digital resources. If digital emblems for the inspection of analog assets were actually included in the work order, the so-called charter, there would be a risk of making the task too complex. "What does it mean if a TLS session has a digital emblem? Is the domain then protected, the data that is exchanged in the session, the computer involved?" he asked.

At the first meeting, Mike Christie, founder of Lechosa and Reuters journalist and Global Head of Editorial Safety from 2014 to 2023, had already argued that journalists' equipment marked with press labels should also be protected by digital emblems.

Standards for whom?

At the meeting, the developers were unable to agree on whether the ICRC should initially be the only use case. The representatives of the Red Cross who attended the meeting recommended that work for users not protected under international law should be assigned to other working groups. In contrast, Bill Woodcock from Packet Clearing House warned that the IETF is working on interoperable standards, not for individual companies or organizations. Discussions on the establishment of a working group are now entering another round.

(mki)