Re: [Gnumed-devel] encryption of documents in archive

[Busser, Jim]

On 2014-01-08, at 1:53 AM, Karsten Hilbert <address@hidden> wrote:

>> I think Karsten's question was more general,
>> inviting project member opinions on encryption of a patient's
>> files
> 
> inside the document archive.

I must be failing to grasp what is meant by the above, in terms of the 
construct of the new functionality, and what advantage the contemplated 
encryption functionality is supposed to serve.

So far, we already have, in GNUmed 1.4x, a document archive in which to store 
per-patient "documents", wherein each document can consist of a single part, or 
multiple parts. 

Most recently, Karsten announced new future functionality, wherein a list of 
documents can be "grown" until such time as someone in the praxis chooses to 
finalize the "export".

What I am wondering is …

-- whether each item, in order to be listed for inclusion in the "export", must 
first exist as an item in the patient's document archive
-- whether what is stored in this "list" is a growing set of "copies" of things 
to be exported, or whether the list consists only of a table which points to 
the various items in the growing list
-- if the latter (a table of pointers) then are we talking about encrypting the 
row in the table (or the entire table)?
-- if the former (if copies of documents are being accumulated in the row of a 
blob, whose column content is to populate the export) then are we talking about 
encrypting the collection of copies and re-encrypting it as it grows?

-- is the output of what is to be exported (say, a zip file) to remain 
permanently stored in the patient's record in GNUmed, despite that this will be 
redundant information, or will it be only the *list* of what was included that 
would remain permanently stored in GNUmed?


>> in order that these can be securely emailed or
>> placed onto media (then to be physically mailed, or else
>> directly transported by the patient or their proxy).
> 
> No, that's a different matter and encryption would
> happen at the time of storage generation.

"storage generation" =

1) being written into a row within the GNUmed db, or
2) being written out of the GNUmed db and out to /tmp filespace from where the 
export can then be written onto media or into email etc

-- Jim

signature.asc
Description: Message signed with OpenPGP using GPGMail