IACR BoD Meeting 20.08.2006 Santa Barbara, CA, USA ============================================================== Preliminary minutes, not approved by the board yet ============================================================== President Andy Clark was unable to attend the meeting. Vice President Bart Preneel took his place as President and presided over the meeting. Preneel called the meeting to order at 10:05am. In attendance: Haber, Benaloh, Desmedt, Halevi, Lenstra, Hughes, Preneel, Handschuh, Berson, Quisquater, Pei, Kim, Joux, Black, Maurer, Cramer, Damg\{aa}rd, Orman, Jakobsson, Matsumoto Identification of Proxies: Preneel has Clark and Knudsen Kim has Phan Berson has Lebedev and Cachin Today's agenda was reviewed and approved. Action items from CRYPTO 2005 and EUROCRYPT 2006 were reviewed and reports were given regarding their resolution. Minutes from EC2006 were approved and will be posted to the IACR website. General Chair Benaloh gave his report on CRYPTO 2006. He reported that we may be short on T-shirts for walk-up registrants. He also mentioned that he has kept day-by-day preregistration statistics, but they were not available for prior years, which would have been useful. Benaloh will forward his statistics to Halevi who will make them available for future chairs. Benaloh reported that this year we had 365 pre-registrants of which 60 are students Treasurer Handschuh gave her report for 2006: TCC returned a surplus of $6,500, FSE is estimated to return $15,000 and PKC is estimated to return $20,000. Benaloh mentioned that CRYPTO should return a slight surplus as well. Our reserves at the beginning of this year were about $600,000, which is approximately the amount needed to cover one full year of conferences and workshops. Handschuh has also investigated allowing payment to IACR in euros via HSBC and reported the associated costs, which amounted to slightly less than 1 euro fixed fees plus 1.5% variable fees per transaction. Halevi pointed out two security concerns with the payment gateway, but expressed confidence that these could be resolved. After lengthy discussion about the associated complexities to such a move, it was decided that we would not pursue this at this time. However there will be ongoing investigation into this matter. ---- Newsletter Editor Hughes gave his report. ---- Journal of Cryptology Editor Maurer reported that he has appointed many new editors. The number of published papers for the Journal has been increased to 20 per year. Maurer reported receiving 40 submissions this year. A discussion also transpired regarding the expiration of Maurer's term at the end of 2007. We will revisit this discussion later today. ---- Membership Secretary Halevi reported a slight increase in membership in 2006. Several members thanked Shai for doing an excellent job on several fronts, including a rump-session submission server. ---- Conference Reports Preneel reported on behalf of Lebedev for EUROCRYPT 2006; final numbers are not yet available. Anonymous submissions were discussed next. Clark (via telephone) led the discussion, describing transactions related to the submission policy for EUROCRYPT 2007. A lengthy discussion ensued. A vote was called for mandatory anonymity for submissions (throughout the full evaluation process) to IACR conferences (CRYPTO, EUROCRYPT, and ASIACRYPT). 16 for, 0 against, 1 abstention. ---- Next came a discussion about how to handle complaints from IACR members regarding rejected papers from our conferences and workshops. The board reaffirmed that we cannot reverse decisions made by program committees and reaffirmed that we can only do our best to select high- quality program chairs so that the process is a fair and of the highest quality possible. ---- The board then selected candidate PC chairs for Asiacrypt and CRYPTO 2008, as well as a candidate General Chair and IACR Distinguished Lecturer for CRYPTO 2008. Preneel will contact these members and invite them to serve. ---- The board received reports from the ASIACRYPT steering committee, and reports on ASIACRYPT 2006, 2007, and 2008. The board also received brief reports from EUROCRYPT 2007 from Preneel, and from CRYPTO 2007 from Jakobsson. The board received reports on CHES 2007, TCC 2007, as well as brief reports on PKC 2007 and FSE 2007. ---- Preneel gave a report on the IACR Fellows Committee on behalf of chair Krawczyk. The number of nominations is currently down, and more nominations are invited. ---- Haber gave a report on the Elections Committee. The committee has received only one nomination thus far. ---- Archivist Orman gave her report. She is having difficultly both with acquiring copyright forms and acquiring papers for the archive, and as a result the archive is not in good shape. Program chairs need to send the copyright forms and the proceedings to the archive. She is having a hard time getting responses from several key people. One piece of good news is EUROCRYPT 2000 and CRYPTO 2000 are now in the archive. Preneel proposed as an action item that Orman try to chase down those people who need to send her the relevant materials. She has agreed to do so. ---- Lenstra gave an overview of his updates to the PC Chair Guidelines document. Several board members offered corrections and additions. The board expressed its appreciation for Lenstra's substantial efforts. ---- Moni Naor visited the board meeting to discuss the anonymity requirements for EUROCRYPT 2007. Moni will present his rationale for the new anonymity policy given in the current EUROCRYPT 2007 CFP at the membership meeting on Wednesday. ---- Preneel then reviewed the Steering Committee Guidelines document on behalf of Cachin. Preneel reviewed the "terms of reference" for General and Program Chairs. Several board members suggested changes, which were made during the meeting. A vote was then proposed that "all program and general chairs must sign an agreement to abide by the terms and conditions given." The vote was carried unanimously. ---- A vote was proposed to extend Maurer's term as editor of the Journal of Cryptology for one more year. The vote was carried unanimously. ---- The board reviewed the draft agenda for the membership meeting on Wednesday. Preneel called the meeting to a close at 5:52pm.