Business Meeting Eurocrypt 2001 Innsbruck 9 May 2001 IACR President McCurley began the meeting at 16:10. McCurley began by welcoming attendees to the Business meeting and describing the history and mission of the IACR. He noted that the IACR is a non-profit association that was founded in 1983 and that its purpose is to advance both the theory and practice of cryptologic research. He indicated the organization had approximately 1,000 members. McCurley then described various activities of the IACR including the annual Eurocrypt, Crypto, and Asiacrypt conferences, the Journal of Cryptology, the IACR Newsletter, the web site at http://www.iacr.org, and the ePrint Archive. McCurley then individually introduced the Officers and Directors of the IACR. Next, McCurley described the elections that would be held in the fall of 2001. He noted that all four IACR Officer positions (President, Vice-President, Secretary, and Treasurer) and three additional Director positions (those currently held by Biham, Diffie, and Landrock) would be up for election of three-year terms to commence at the beginning of 2002. McCurley introduced the Election Committee consisting of himself, Balenson, and Desmedt, and he encouraged people to consider running for positions on the IACR Board. ________________________________________________________________________ McCurley then invited Eurocrypt 2001 Program Chair Pfitzmann to the podium while reminding the audience that IACR is a volunteer organization that depends upon the efforts of its members. He then thanked Pfitzmann and awarded her a plaque in appreciation of her work as Program Chair. Applause was given by all. McCurley then invited Eurocrypt 2001 General Chair Posch to the podium. He thanked Posch and awarded him a plaque in appreciation of his work as General Chair. Applause was given by all. ________________________________________________________________________ Treasurer Langford then gave a financial report. She noted that the IACR was financially sound and listed financial results for year 2000 IACR conferences. She said that Eurocrypt 2000 had returned a $17,000 surplus on income of $221,000, that Crypto 2000 had returned a surplus of $46,000 on income of $236,000, and that Asiacrypt 2000 had returned a surplus of $4,000 on income of $112,000. Langford said that full costs for administrative services provided by the IACR Secretariat had been paid. She said that the IACR held $203,000 in certificates of deposit, $150,000 in checking accounts, and $175,000 in other accounts, and that the total reserves of the IACR (after discounting liabilities) was approximately $350,000. Langford then noted that the IACR does practice price discrimination by providing subsidies to students (something felt to be of general benefit to the community) and by charging higher fees for late registration (since funds are needed well in advance of conferences). She then noted that conferences are budgeted to break even. ________________________________________________________________________ McCurley then told the audience that dues for the IACR are included in conference registration costs and include the Journal of Cryptology and access to membership services. He said that dues were currently $80 and noted that about 3/4 of this amount was used to pay for the Journal of Cryptology. He also noted that present year's dues pay for the following year's membership in the IACR. ________________________________________________________________________ McCurley then reported on the Journal of Cryptology in the absence of Journal Editor Feigenbaum. He said that the Journal was in good shape and encouraged members to submit research papers. He then noted that Feigenbaum's term as Journal Editor would be expiring at the end of 2001 and solicited comments from the membership for a new Editor-in-Chief. He said that Feigenbaum had done a great job at a thankless task. Brian Snow asked what the current backlog for the Journal was, and McCurley responded that it was about six months. ________________________________________________________________________ Newsletter Editor Cachin then reported on the IACR Newsletter, web site, and ePrint Archive. He said that the Newsletter was published thrice annually and sent by e-mail to IACR members and was also available at http://www.iacr.org/newsletter. He noted that the next issue would be closing at the end of May and invited submissions to be sent to newsletter@iacr.org. Cachin then reported on the ePrint Archive. He said that technical reports, pre-prints, and full versions of papers were accepted without refereeing and made available at http://eprint.iacr.org. Rich Schroeppel noted that he had not received that Newsletter by e-mail. Cachin suggested that Schroeppel check to make certain that his correct e-mail address was listed with his membership data. Schroeppel then asked whether the ePrint Archive accepted editorials, and Cachin replied that it did so long as they were technical. Cachin then reminded the audience that the Newsletter is available on the web and includes book reviews, conference announcements, job announcements, and other information of interest to the community. ________________________________________________________________________ McCurley then announced details of upcoming IACR conferences. Crypto 2001 is scheduled for 19-23 August 2001 in Santa Barbara. The General Chair is Dave Balenson, and the Program Chair is Joe Kilian. Asiacrypt 2001 is scheduled for 9-13 December 2001 on the Gold Coast of Australia. The General Chair is Ed Dawson, and the Program Chair is Colin Boyd. Eurocrypt 2002 is scheduled for 28 April - 2 May, 2002 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The General Chair is Barry Schoenmakers, and the Program Chair is Lars Knudsen. Crypto 2002 is tentatively scheduled for the third week in August in Santa Barbara. The General Chair is Rebecca Wright, and the Program Chair is Moti Yung. Asiacrypt 2002 is tentatively scheduled for 1-5 December 2002 in Queenstown, New Zealand. The General Chair is Henry Wolfe, and the Program Chair is Yuliang Zheng. ________________________________________________________________________ McCurley then told the audience that IACR membership services are provided by the IACR Secretariat at UCSB and that personal information can be updated by e-mailing iacrmem@iacr.org. He noted that the Secretariat also handles registration for conferences and mailing of the Journal of Cryptology. ________________________________________________________________________ Brian Snow said that most conferences don't bill in advance and questioned why this was done at IACR conferences. Langford replied that the IACR had already paid deposits to hotels for Eurocrypt 2002 but promised to look into this with the UCSB where the billing is done. Snow asserted that he had had to register late because had he registered normally he would have been charged before the conference and before he could obtain reimbursement. Diffie suggested that one's sponsoring agency might be able to pay the bill directly, and McCurley noted that the credit card charge appears as "University of California" which might be confusing to some. ________________________________________________________________________ McCurley then reported on the IACR Board decision to provide sponsorship of future FSE workshops. He noted that a proposal was made by the FSE Steering Committee and approved by the IACR Board. Diffie noted that this had taken place after more debate than any other subject. McCurley said that the IACR would assume financial responsibility for FSE as of 2002, that the FSE Steering Committee would run the actual workshop, and that copyrights for FSE proceedings would be assigned to the IACR. Berson noted the use of the term "workshop" rather than "conference". Markus Dichtl asked what FSE is. Biham responded by listing several members of the FSE Steering Committee including himself, Knudsen, Matsui, Preneel, Massey, and Vaudenay and said that this was FSE's first Program Committee plus several additional members. Dichtl asked about the process of sponsorship. McCurley responded that FSE workshops would be approved by the IACR Board on an annual basis. McCurley then noted that other workshops have also sought this sponsorship and that this strains the resources of the IACR, but that the FSE Steering Committee is extremely well-run. Schroeppel then asked if it was the intent of FSE workshops to break even, and McCurley responded that this was the case to the extent possible. McCurley noted that IACR budgets conservatively for the number of expected attendees. Diffie noted that FSE broke even in 1999, turned a small surplus in 2000, and that numbers for 2001 were not yet known. ________________________________________________________________________ McCurley then asked for a straw poll from the audience about how many people would NOT use on-line registration because of privacy, security, or other concerns. Approximately nine hands were raised in the audience of approximately one hundred. Schroeppel said that he had had mixed experiences with on-line transactions. Desmedt noted that processing could be less expensive. Hilarie Orman requested that this NOT be done using JavaScript. Brian Snow said that he assumed that on-line registration would be optional, and McCurley responded that it would be. McCurley also noted that database management might be easier electronically. Snow suggested that e-mail could solve this concern. McCurley then asked how many members would use on-line tools to manage their IACR records. Almost all of the audience members raised their hands. Clark noted that IACR incurs approximately $6,000 in annual mailing costs and asked whether members liked the idea of sending registration by e-mail. Almost all of the audience members raised their hands in approval. Snow requested that e-mail registration forms be supplied in both a basic ASCII format and a "pretty" format. Greg Rose noted that a lack of paper registration forms makes distribution to colleagues more difficult. McCurley suggested that there were trade-offs. Mike Wiener asked if such a service could be used to obtain membership information. McCurley responded that it would not in order to prevent "crawling" to access personal data. McCurley suggested that this site would be password protected and would only be used to facilitate update of records. ________________________________________________________________________ At 16:52, McCurley opened the floor for other business. Rose noted to members that the airline code for the Gold Coast of Australia is "OOL". Dawson then noted that busses and trains are available from Brisbane. Orman asked about a possible update to the IACR conference CD-ROM. McCurley responded that the previous CD-ROM had sold out but that Springer-Verlag may reprint it. In response to the issue of an update, McCurley said that the CD-ROM was currently full, but that Springer-Verlag now had all conferences on-line and that the IACR is working to make access available to all of its members. Orman described the CD-ROM as a vital resource and suggested rolling the content. McCurley said that he felt that rolling was a good idea, but that Springer-Verlag would prefer to give electronic access. Orman expressed the concern that electronic access would be cumbersome. Orman then suggested that there be some accommodation made to accept short papers at one or more of the IACR annual conferences. McCurley responded that the rump sessions serve some of this function and that the Program Chairs have wide discretion. Desmedt added that previous IACR conferences have had varying talk lengths and that this was upsetting to authors. Orman expressed the view that this should not be upsetting if pre-arranged. McCurley asked for a sense of the audience, and about a dozen members expressed support for a short paper category. Niels Ferguson asked if there was a good outlet for short papers, and Cachin suggested that they be submitted to the ePrint Archive. Schroeppel asked what provisions existed for a record of the rump sessions, and Diffie responded that varying accommodations have been made in the past. Schroeppel then asked who holds the copyright on the Journal of Cryptology, and McCurley responded that copyright is held by the IACR. A member then asked about details for Eurocrypt 2003, and McCurley said that an announcement would be made when details were finalized. Orman then noted that there is much good crypto-related material available on the web and suggested that the IACR could perform a service by collating this material. McCurley responded that Avi Ruben has built such an index, and said that it might be useful for the IACR to do something similar but that it would require significant maintenance. Brian Snow observed that the NSA provides similar services for U.S. universities. A member asked whether the IACR intends to include Asiacrypt conference proceedings on a CD-ROM, and McCurley replied that at the time the CD-ROM was assembled, only Eurocrypt and Crypto were IACR conferences. McCurley then said that if an update to the CD-ROM was done, then such an addition might be possible. Markus Dichtl expressed an objection to the fact that payment for Eurocrypt was done in U.S. dollars rather than euros and noted that IACR risks currency fluctuation in doing so. McCurley responded that the IACR takes a risk either way since a significant portion of the Eurocrypt expenditures are in U.S. dollars and noted that the euro does not apply in non-eurozone nations. Langford added that U.S. banks are limited in their world view and that she was not willing to spend an unlimited amount of time on the issue. Langford said that she has been told that Visa and MasterCard require payments through UCSB to be in U.S. dollars. Langford then added that having a non-U.S. bank account adds burdens but that she is working on this while noting that currently fluctuations have generally been small. McCurley added that payments through UCSB allow consistency, control, and fiscal integrity and then asked how many people were irritated by the U.S. dollar payments. Nine members raised their hands to indicate their irritation. [Note, UCSB charges the IACR a substantially lower fee for credit card payments than would be obtained independently (about 2% versus 4%). This 2% differential represents a significant savings for the IACR.] Clark then noted that the priorities of the IACR include some costly items and that approximately $25 of member dues go to support these costs. Niels Ferguson suggested that we evaluate potential benefits before investing. Desmedt asked in what currency the Journal of Cryptology is paid for. Langford replied that the Journal is paid for in U.S. dollars but that the conference proceedings are paid for in German deutschmarks. A member asked if it would be possible to include a CD-ROM with each proceedings. McCurley responded that this was a low priority and then asked how many members would pay an extra $10 for a CD-ROM with the proceedings. Most members indicated that they would be willing to pay the extra $10. McCurley noted that a CD-ROM alone would cause a V.A.T. to be added and that it was therefore valuable to bundle the CD-ROM with printed proceedings. Ferguson suggested including a CD-ROM with the entire most recent year of IACR conference proceedings. McCurley estimated that this would cost approximately $10 per copy. The meeting was adjourned at 17:19. ________________________________________________________________________ Respectfully submitted Josh Benaloh IACR Secretary