Thanks to John Young, I have placed the test of the handouts from Wedensday's and Thursday's meetings on my Nist pages. url: http://www.isse.gmu.edu/~pfarrell/nistmeeting.html It is my belief that this meeting was a staged presentation. Nearly every industry representative said that this was a fatally flawed idea. It was "a non-starter." The government representatives said that they heard the comments, but insisted on proceeding. The most depressing presentation was Thursday morning, made by a high level Dept of Justice flack. I'll have to dig out my notes, his name was Geoff G... He presented the usual drug dealer, pedophile and terrorist line, and added corrupt government officials. He pretended to talk about foriegn bad guys. Nearly all were domestic. He clearly wants weak GAK so that he can decrypt anything domestically that he wants. It is clear to me that the government intends that industry provide crippled encryption "for export" with the never stated expectation that since industry has repeatedly said that they want only one version of products, capable of being sold worldwide, that Domestic products will be crippled. It is equally clear from representatives of IBM, Compaq, DEC, Lotus, and others that I talked to, that crypto product development will simply move offshore. Ireland, Israel, and Germany already have significant experience in developing commercial software. It is depressing to hear our Commerce department chasing technology and jobs overseas. GAK is bad enough. Weak GAK makes me gag. Pat Pat Farrell grad student http://www.isse.gmu.edu/students/pfarrell Infor. Systems and Software Engineering, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA PGP key available via finger or request #include standard.disclaimer