July 23, 2002

The Honorable Condoleezza Rice

Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20500

Dear Dr. Rice,

As the Co-chairs of the Association for Computing Machinery's (ACM) Advisory Committee on Security and Privacy (ACSP), we are writing to offer our advisory assistance to help secure the U.S. computing infrastructure against malicious attacks, whether from terrorists or common criminals. The ACM is the world's oldest, non-profit organization for computing professionals. The ACSP is a select committee of ACM members, chosen to provide expert advice and guidance in cybersecurity and privacy issues.

The ACSP includes a dozen U.S. citizens with an aggregate of more than 200 years of experience in information security and assurance, privacy, cybercrime, and allied fields. Our members are leading authorities in the cryptography, privacy and computer security communities. They include Fellows of the ACM, IEEE and AAAS, members of the National Academy of Engineering, and holders of every major information security award in existence; 50% of the committee members hold the nation's highest award in information security, the NSA/NIST National Computer Security Award. Our members have experience in government, academia and industry.

We recognize that there are a great many problems that need to be addressed to help secure our infrastructure. Some of these problems have known solutions that are infrequently applied while other problems will require long-term basic research and development of new technologies. We are ready and willing to contribute to these efforts with our expertise, advice, and leadership.

Members of the ACSP (affiliations provided for identification purposes only) include Peter Neumann (SRI International), Eugene H. Spafford (Purdue University CERIAS), Steve Bellovin (AT&T Labs Research), Matthew Blaze (AT&T Labs Research), David Clark (MIT), Dorothy Denning (Georgetown University), Ed Felten (Princeton University), David Farber (University of Pennsylvania), Susan Landau (Sun Microsystems), Robert Morris (Dartmouth College), Fred Schneider (Cornell University), and Willis Ware (RAND Corporation).

Please direct your staff to contact the ACM Public Policy Office at (202)478-6124 if we can be of assistance. We look forward to working with you.

Sincerely,

Peter Neumann, Ph.D.

Eugene H. Spafford, Ph.D.

Co-Chairs

Advisory Committee on Security and Privacy (ACSP)

Association for Computing Machinery