1976 DES Workshop Notes (National Institute of Standards and Technology)

To Whom It May Concern:

Pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act, I hereby request the following records:

Meeting agendas, minutes, attendance lists, notes, or other written records created for workshops hosted by the National Bureau of Standards in August and September 1976 on the topic of the proposed Data Encryption Standard, including records from any meetings in 1975-1976 between National Security Agency and National Bureau of Standards personnel to discuss encryption standards.

The requested documents will be made available to the general public.

In order to help to determine my status to assess fees, you should know that I am affiliated with a university, and this request is made for a scholarly purpose and not for a commercial use. In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.

Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter.

I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 20 business days, as the statute requires.

Sincerely,

Jillian Foley

Ms. O'Reilly,

Thank you for your response on my FOIA request DOC-NIST-2020-000817. I had requested material responsive to the following:
"Meeting agendas, minutes, attendance lists, notes, or other written records created for workshops hosted by the National Bureau of Standards in August and September 1976 on the topic of the proposed Data Encryption Standard, including records from any meetings in 1975-1976 between National Security Agency and National Bureau of Standards personnel to discuss encryption standards."

Can you provide more information about why there were no responsive documents?

I have several documents, including some from NIST, that reference two workshops held by the National Bureau of Standards on the topic of the proposed Data Encryption Standard before it was finalized. Is it the case that there are no documents whatsoever pursuant to these workshops? Or perhaps was I overly specific and got the dates or other details about these workshops wrong in my request? Is there another way I should phrase the FOIA request to access records on these workshops?

Thank you for your time,
Jillian Foley