PGP/GPG encryption and decryption of files

What problem are you are trying to solve?

In my experience, a fairly common use case of SFTP for healthcare organizations is to still treat it as insecure storage. These organizations will exchange PGP/GPG keys while setting up SFTP, encrypt all files with PGP/GPG before sending, and ask the sender to do the same when receiving. This seems to simply be how things are done in this industry.

Right now to use rclone to transfer files with an organization using SFTP in this way, I will also need to set up 2 additional systems - one to encrypt all the files I want to send, and one to decrypt all the files I receive.

How do you think rclone should be changed to solve that?

It would be amazing if rclone would support this configuration itself natively. For example, if I could specify in my configuration which key to use to encrypt files before writing, and which keychain (or path to a key, or simply use the default gpg keychain, or whatever else makes more sense) to decrypt files before reading, it would make using rclone far more valuable for organizations in healthcare with this workflow.

I have a hunch that this is what #1295 was also asking for, but I obviously cannot speak for the person who posted that issue - I thought I'd just be clear about my use case, and I'm obviously happy to help with the implementation in whichever way I can.

How to use GitHub

• Please use the 👍 reaction to show that you are affected by the same issue.
• Please don't comment if you have no relevant information to add. It's just extra noise for everyone subscribed to this issue.
• Subscribe to receive notifications on status change and new comments.

No implementation files, tests, or entry points are named. Start by reviewing related issue #1295 and rclone's configuration, SFTP, and encryption areas; clarify key selection and read/write behavior, then define acceptance criteria for native PGP/GPG handling.