IACR Election Statement by Kevin McCurley

The priorities I see for IACR going forward include:

• Maintaining quality in our publications, conferences, and workshops. I intend to hold this as our primary measure of success in all our activities.
• Strengthening our web presence to support electronic registration, electronic submissions, electronic refereeing, and membership services. I was the one who started the IACR web site, and Christian Cachin has done a wonderful job in improving the quality of the web site. Our needs going forward will require efforts from multiple people in this area.
• Continuing to evolve our publishing toward electronic distribution. Our relationship with Springer-Verlag has served us well, and Springer-Verlag has been proactive in their pursuit of electronic distribution to bolster their traditional and valued paper publishing. At the same time, the IACR e-print archive has evolved to serve an important role in rapid dissemination of the most up-to-date material. We need to continue to evolve as the needs and wishes of the membership evolve.
• Continued support for students and newcomers to the field. IACR conferences offer stipends and greatly reduced fees for student attendees, and we need to continue to make it easy for people to enter the field.
• Promoting the intellectual freedom and vitality of the international research community. Cryptology has always had a strong political element to it, but the recent actions involving the U.S. Digital Millenium Copyright Act threaten the ability of our members to publish their work. Moreover, in so doing it also interferes with efforts to improve the technology to serve the interests that the DMCA was designed to protect. We need to make sure that such actions do not interfere with the pursuit of cryptologic research.