We are pleased to bring you this issue of Cipher!  You will find excellent reviews of WWW9 (by Mary Ellen Zurko), Eurocrypt (by Richard Graveman), and NDSS (by Mahesh Tripunitara) along with Robert Bruen's book reviews, an editorial by Carl Landwehr, and Anish Mathuria's Readers Guide.

In the August issue, we will have reviews for  S&P 2000, CSFW, and NCISSE.  If you are attending one of the many summer conferences or workshops and are willing to write a review (or 'volunteer' a colleague to write a review), please let me know.  One item of note from the TC meeting at S&P in Oakland was the naming of the conference organizers for S&P 2001:
                Conference Chair:  Li Gong
                Conference Vice Chair:  Heather Hinton
                Program Chair:  Roger Needham
                Program Vice Chair:  Martin Abadi
                Treasurer:  Brian Loe
Next year's symposium is clearly in good hands!

Some of you may not be familiar with NCISSE; it's a colloquium that brings together academia, government, and industry to discuss, predominately,  strategies to advance INFOSEC educational and research efforts at academic institutions.  During the course of a panel session featuring IT directors from two US state governments, the issue of supporting the Uniform Computer Information Transaction Act arose.  In anticipation of a future guest editorial on this issue, I'd like to give you a homework assignment (yes, this WILL be on the final exam).  The text for UCITA can be found at www.law.upenn.edu/bll/ulc/ulc_frame.htm and a few points of opposition are given at www.badsoftware.com/oppose.htm.  This discussion was but a few minutes in a very productive three day colloquium; a summary of other presentations will be provided in August.  While this particular problem is US-centric, the underlying issues are significant to all of us.

As always, many thanks to our contributors and for their help in putting this issue together!

Best regards,

Jim Davis