Thought that some of you might find this interesting... Mephisto **Forwarded Message** To: rsaref-users@RSA.COM From: KH3@CU.NIH.GOV Date: Fri, 03 Dec 1993 16:11:53 EST Subject: New GAO report on Communications Privacy Acknowledge-To: KH3@NIHCU.BITNET X-Acknowledge-To: KH3@NIHCU.BITNET Sender: rsaref-users-request@RSA.COM GAO recently issued a report "Communications Privacy: Federal Policy and Actions", GAO/OSI-94-2, dated November 4, 1993, that may be of interest to members of your group. The report focused on the following issues: - The need for information privacy in computer and communications systems--through such means as encryption, or conversion of clear text to an unreadable form--to mitigate the threat of economic espionage to U.S. industry; - federal agency authority to develop cryptographic standards for the protection of sensitive, unclassified information and the actions and policies of the National Security Agency (NSA), Department of Defense, and of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NI ST), Department of Commerce, regarding the selection of federal cryptographic standards; - roles, actions, and policies of NSA and the Department of State related to export controls for products with encryption capabilities and industry rationale for requesting liberalization of such controls; and - the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) legislative proposal regarding telephone systems that use digital communications technology. I have placed an electronic version of the report named OSI-94-2.TXT in the GAO-REPORTS anonymous FTP directory at NIH (ftp.cu.nih.gov). Joe Sokalski, GAO--Los Angeles kh3@cu.nih.gov ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To find out more about the anon service, send mail to help@anon.penet.fi. Due to the double-blind, any mail replies to this message will be anonymized, and an anonymous id will be allocated automatically. You have been warned. Please report any problems, inappropriate use etc. to admin@anon.penet.fi.