Handling of private/confidential groupware objects

[Bernhard Reiter]

Am Freitag, 2. Dezember 2005 02:50 schrieb Helge Hess:
> On 30. Nov 2005, at 05:25 Uhr, Martin Konold wrote:
> > The GUI of both Outlook and Kontact offer the possibility to make some
> > groupware objects private/confidential.
>
> I think you mix up two things (quite a common misconception):
> a) sensitivity (private / confidential / public [/ top secret /...])
> b) access control
>
>
> a) has nothing to do with b), its like the red "top secret" or
> "confidential" print on a file.

Hi Helge,
I agree on the general point that there are marking and access control.

> The intention is to make the information consumer aware of the
> sensitivity of the data. Eg a secretary won't open a file marked "top
> secret" but rather pass it on to her general (but she stil has access).

For this I would say that technology 
should prevent the secretary having access.

> Or to give another anology: you might tell your friend your personal
> income but explicitly tag the information as "private". So he will
> know that he must not tell other people or get kicked.

Your friend has the information in this case, though.

> Summary2: you can't do that with IMAP4 because you lack per-message
> access control.
>    calendar.private is insufficient. You would at _least_ need to have
>    calendar.$userid$ since private as per b) belongs to a certain
> user [unlike a)]

In Martin's example, one extra calendar would be enough, 
as this is only access control to one person (the user).
Because all users have calendar folder, one named private
for each of them is enough.

But, as you can see from my other email, you might need more combinations
of folders.

Bernhard