************************************************************************* MINUTES of the IACR Board of Directors Meeting CRYPTO '97, Santa Barbara, CA Date: Sunday, August 17, 1997 Time: 10:00am - 5:00pm Location: UCSB UCEN Building. Present: Kevin McCurley(President), Tom Berson, Gilles Brassard, Andy Clark, Joan Feigenbaum, Burt Kaliski, Peter Landrock, Ueli Maurer, Eiji Okamoto(observer), Roland Mueller, Birgit Pfitzmann, Bart Preneel, Bruce Schneier, Jimmy Upton, Paul Van Oorschot, Stafford Tavares(Secretary) 1. Welcome and Identification of Proxies Kevin called the meeting to order and asked if there were any proxies. There were none. 2. Review and Approval of Agenda Jimmy requested the addition of the items: * potential IACR participation in the AES iniative of NIST * five year plan Andy requested the addition of * the membership list 3. Review and Approval of Minutes from Board Meeting of EUROCRYPT '97 Items arising from the previous minutes: * review of committees of the Board(Birgit) * review of Guidelines documents (various sections) The minutes were approved as circulated. 4. Status of CRYPTO '97 (Kaliski/Schneier) Burt said that to date there had been about 500 registrants. Regarding the Technical Program, there were 160 submissions, of which 36 were accepted(reduced to 35). There were also two invited lectures. The Program Committee adopted an anonymous review process, used electronic mail, and there was no Program Committee meeting. There was a problem of "closure" and some reviewers may have been inhibited by the review process. Joan said that she had a different expereince with a more structured process and that two rounds can achieve decisions. Gilles liked the process used by Burt and preferred less structure. In response to a question from Tom, Burt said that no good papers were rejected. There were 14 papers that were submitted by Committee members and six were accepted. Andy asked if there was any heavy dependence on (personnel) resources. Burt replied that it amounted to a day's work. Kevin thanked Burt for his input and his efforts as Program Chair. Note: It was suggested that Burt's views should be incorporated into the Program Chair's Guidelines. 5. Financial Report (Upton) Jimmy said that his financial report was essentially the same as that presented at the Board meeting at EUROCRYPT '97. The current financial year is a breakeven one, within a thousand dollars. The IACR had a balance on hand of about $180,000. Some recent information was that EUROCRYPT '97 was a breakeven conference. He prdicted that CRYPTO '97 will have a profit. The cash flow was of the order $450,000 ~ $500,000. Jimmy wondered if the IACR should file for income tax purposes in California. Kevin said that we should file in California. Kevin also wondered about the cost to the IACR of using credit cards for payment. The cost was estimated by Jimmy to be around 3~4%. This applied to 60% of CRYPTO payments last year. 6. Membership Secretary Report (Clark) Andy listed some "alert" conditions: * consider scretatiat * he is happy with the state of affairs * he is in possession of a substantial stock of back isues * labels have been sent * a copy of the database has been sent to Bruce Schneier * the EUROCRYPT '97 registrantions have been integated into the database Andy said that he has been receiving and processing many enquries. Of the active entries in the database, 35% have an email listing. The current number of members was 897 and 74% of these gave an email address. The membership churn rate was typicaly above 50%. The membership list has been sent to Fritz for inclusion in the Newsletter. The Board formally thanked Andy for his fine effort as Membership Secretary. At this point, Kevin welcomed Dr. Okamoto to the meeting. 7. IACR secretariat (McCurley, Clark, Upton) Kevin distributed a proposal to create a secretariat for the IACR. He then reviewed some of the issues which created a need for a secretariat, e.g., the growth in membership and the increased registrations at the IACR sponsored conferences. There was extensive discusson of the role, management, and how the secretariat would support the mission of the IACR. At this time Bruce Schneier joined the meeting to report on CRYPTO '97. He said there were 500 delegates peregistered and the dorms are full. There has been a lot of late registrations and the conference was becoming too big. One quarter of the registrations were in the "problem file". There was a new coffee bar after the beach barbeque this year. Finances were looking good. Andy asked about the amount of work involved in running CRYPTO. Bruce replied that it required a full time person for about 2~3 months in the summer. He also suggested an earlier deadline for registrations. Bruce said he would give a more complete report to the Board at a later time. (He liked the idea of a secretariat) Kevin returned to the matter of the secretariat. In response to a question, it was pointed out that the "secretary" would be on contract and not an employee of the IACR. Further, the budget in the document should be seen as an upper bound on expenses. Motion:(Jimmy/Tom) That the Board approve the recommendations in the Proposal for an IACR Secretariat. Carried(9 for/1 abstention) 8. Conferences Requiring Planning: 8.1. Selection of Program Chair and General Chair for CRYPTO '99. After some discussion, a short list of candidates was drawn up. Kevin will seek the consent of the candidates. 8.2. EUROCRYPT '2000(will return to this topic later) Kevin informed the Board that we have had proposals from Belgium, Yugoslavia, and Italy. At this point Roland joined the meeting. 9. Election Committee (Pfitzmann) The Board was reminded that Bart was Chair of the committee and Ueli was the returning officer. The deadline for nominations was 12 Sept. Kevin will put the call for nominations on the IACR webpage. 10. Terms of membership on Board by General Chairs (McCurley) After some discussion the following motion was passed. Motion:(Andy/Jimmy) That the General Chair should be a member of the Board for the year preceding, and the year during the respective conference. 11. "Anonymous" Submission Policy (McCurley, Krawczyk, Stern) There was some discussion of how much freedom the Board should allow the Program Chair in organizing the Program. In particular, anonymous refereeing was introduced by Gilles Brassard when he was Program Chair of CRYPTO '89. After some discussion there was a sense that the Board was in favour of retaining anonymous refereeing. 8.2(continued) EUROCRYPT '2000 Mr. H.-K. Lo who is with the Hewlett-Packard Labs in the U.K. joined the meeting This proposal suggested Bath as the site for EUROCRYPT '2000 and it would be jointly organized with Royal Holloway in London. There are two good locations in Bath, one with a lecture room that can hold 500 and another that can hold 700. The site is less than 100 miles from the airport. Mr. Lo said that the conference would not be very expensive, but he did not have a budget at this time. Kevin informed him that the IACR intended to create a secretariat which would assist the organizers in running the conference and that a decision would be made by EUROCRYPT '98. In the absence of Bart, EUROCRYPT '2000 was further discussed and a decision was made(with one abstention). 12. Policy on Conferences Held in Cooperation with IACR. (McCurley) Kevin startetd the discussion by posing the question: what does the designation "in cooperation with" mean? He had received some input and there were instances of objection to assigning the designation. In fact, he said the IACR gives minimal "cooperation" with such conferences. After some discussion of the pros and cons of the benefit to the IACR of assigning such a designation, it was decided to strike a committee. Motion:(Peter/Ueli) That the Board strike a committee to draft crteria for assigning "in cooperation with", seek approval of the Board, and then delegate the authority to the President. The members of the committeee would be Birgit, Joan, and Peter. The motion carried. In the interim, authority would be delegated to the President until the committee reported. Dr Okamoto raised the issue of IACR "sponsorship" of ASIACRYPT. As benefits to the IACR, he pointed out that ASIACRYPT makes money, and that sponsorship would add a couple of hundred of members to the IACR. Kevin wondered what was the feeling of the ASIACRYPT Steering Committee on IACR sponsorship? He also raised the issue of IACR control of ASIACRYPT. Tom suggested the model considered by the ASIACRYPT Steering Committee. The IACR could elect regional Board members. Kevin said that the IACR needed a specific proposal to specify what "sponsorship" means. It was agreed by the Board to have a discussion and pass a motion as appropriate on ASIACRYPT sponsorship at EURUCRYPT '98. 13. Proposed IACR Policy on Publishing Freedom (McCurley) This item was tabled till a further meeting. 14. Journal Contract Negotiations (Berson) Tom reported on discussions with Springer regarding continuing publication of the Journal by Springer. He said the IACR wants to renew with Springer. He reminded the Board that the IACR owns the intellectual property in the Journal. Hence copyright transfer from the author to the Journal is incorrect. The proper transfer is author to the IACR. Springer wants to create an electronic version of the Journal. It would be available to IACR members(at no cost). Authors can submit papers to the Journal in LATEX format. The price of the Journal to IACR members is $49. for 1997 and 1998. Tom expected that before the end of the year there will be a contract with Springer for Kevin to sign. Kevin thanked Tom for his report and his efforts on behalf of the IACR. The situation with regard to producing a CD-ROM was a mess. Both Kevin and Tom are talking with Springer to resolve the matter. 15. Journal Report (Brassard, Feigenbaum) Joan reported that things are going fine with the Journal. She has received 33 submissions, 10 of which had been rejected and 1 of which had been accepted. Shamir, Yao, and Massey have resigned from the Editorial Board of the Journal. Two new members have been appointed, namely, Moni Noar and Bart Preneel. Gilles added that the papers for 1998 have already been selected. There is roughly an eighteen month backlog for acepted papers. He noted that the Journal currently publishes 4 issues per year, each containing 72 pages. To foster timely dissemination of information, Joan offered to publish titles of accepted papers that were not yet published. The Board thanked Joan and Gilles for their efforts in editing the Journal. 16. Newsletter Report (Bauspiess) Fritz was not present and this item was deferred to the next Board meeting. 17. EUROCRYPT '97 Report(Mueller) Roland said that he estimated a profit of around 4000 Marks and that the rise in the value of the U.S. dollar had reduced the anticipated surplus. 18. Status of EUROCRYPT '98(Kevin) It was reported that progress was slow, but that there were no problems. The Board will need a budget and will provide the General Chair with a cash advance. 19. Conference Guidelines Board Members responsible are as follows: General Chair Guidelines: Birgit and Kevin Program Chair Guidelines: Ueli(will circulate new draft) 20. Awards (Preneel) The Board agreed that awards are important and that efforts should continue. Bart was asked to draft a proposal; he would discuss it with Peter Landrock and Birgit Pfitzmann. 21. Other Business The Bylaws Amendments should be published in the Newsletter. Five Year Plan(Upton) Jimmy raised the issue of where the Board would like to see the IACR in five years (more services, less services, bigger, smaller, etc). The consensus was that we should be doing the same thing we are doing now. Jimmy raised the matter of IACR cooperation with NIST in the process of developing the Advancd Encryption Standard(AES). What should be the role of the IACR? Kevin remarked that the AES is an open standard and the IACR could facilitate the meeting held on the day after CRYPTO '98(a Friday). Tom discussed the topic of fundraising from successful companies in the security business. he suggested that we ask them to make financial pledges to the IACR. The Board agreed that Tom will approach such organizations for donations to the IACR. It was agreed that Dr. Okamoto would receive a copy of the minutes. 22. Draft Agenda for General Business Meeting of Members * Anonymous Submissions * Announce General Chairs * Announce Future Conferences(including ASIACRYPT '98) * Financial Report * Journal Report * Membership Report * Bylaws and Elections 23. Review of Action Items Committees of the Board Secretariat Update Guidelines Board elections Publish Revised Bylaws in Newsletter Negotiations with Springer Corporate donations 24. Attend Cocktail Party! The meeting adjourned at 5:50PM. Stafford Tavares Secretary, IACR