Normally it is not so easy to get insights into the crypto policy of huge organisations. However, the US-PTO (Patent and Trademark Office) planning to spend $1.2 billion until 2004 for a complete renewal of its IT framework just has published a paper titled "TECHNICAL REFERENCE MODEL Version 4.0" which is available via http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/cio/trm/index.htm Crypto-related stuff is somewhat scattered across the text but is especially interesting in http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/cio/trm/4-11.htm where we can learn that obviously single DES hasn't been canceled from the agenda and that Escrowed Encryption Standard (EES) seems not to be dead. Axel H Horns
