Re: st: Features for Stata 14

[Phil Schumm <pschumm@uchicago.edu>]

On Sep 3, 2013, at 5:50 AM, Daniel Feenberg <feenberg@nber.org> wrote:
> On Tue, 3 Sep 2013, Simon wrote:
>> Sorry of this is a little tangential. I occasionally work with data sets that I prefer to keep encrypted. At the moment I have to mount a true crypt drive then run stata as required. Would it be possible to have an encrypted version of a .dta file where stata manages access and requests the pass phrase?
> 
> Windows has the Encrypting File System for this function.
> 
> Unix has similar file systems, but more easily you can do this by reading from a pipe. The examples below are about reading from a compressed file, but should work with an encrypted file also, using your choice of encryption code. See:
> 
>  http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/unix/read-data-from-pipe/
>  http://www.nber.org/stata/efficient/pipes.html
>  http://www.stata.com/statalist/archive/2012-09/msg00337.html
> 
> The statalist message linked to above repeats a rumour that Stata no longer supports pipes, but that is contradicted by my experience, and would be very sad if true.
> 
> I wouldn't think that Stata should take on the burden of having an encryption module itself, but it should be compatible with the encryption technology that comes with the OS.


Agreed -- Stata should (if anything) simply facilitate working with existing encryption solutions.  And I continue to have the same experience as you do WRT reading data from pipes -- under Stata 13, I have no problem using GnuPG to decrypt to a pipe and then reading that directly into Stata via -use-.  FWIW, I am running Stata SE on OS X.

To the OP, while the pipe strategy may be a viable alternative (assuming that it does indeed continue to work and that you are on Unix/Linux/OS X), I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss TrueCrypt, or equivalently, anything that allows you to create an encrypted volume (e.g., encrypted disk images on OS X).  For one thing, if you're really concerned about data security, then you need to have Stata's tmpdir on an encrypted volume too -- otherwise, you're saving (decrypted) copies of your dataset every time you use tempfiles (or every time you execute a command that does).  Thus, the easiest way to set up a semi-secure data analysis environment in Stata is to mount an encrypted volume, move your tmpdir to it, and keep all of your datasets there.  And finally, if you don't like having to deal with your password/passphrase, you can store it in a keychain.


-- Phil


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