Re: MED_vac

[Scott Brickner <sjb@universe.digex.net>]

"Thomas M. Swiss" writes:
>     A (possibly stupid) thought: could commercial key escrow help here?
>
>     I very much want hospitals to have fast access to my medical data if
>my broken and bleeding body should come through their door, even if I am
>unconscious and my personal physician cannot be reached. On the other hand,
>I don't want anyone to be snooping through them right now.

Actually, Bell Labs outlines a system which can preserve anonymity
under these circumstances in "The Use of Communications Networks to
Increase Personal Privacy In a Health Insurance Architecture" at
<URL:ftp://ftp.research.att.com/dist/anoncc/privacy.health.ps.Z>.

It's based on their anonymous credit card protocol, which is really a
sort of identity escrow service managed by a remailer.  You might find
it interesting.