This sort of chain of custody thing you're referring to is also known as Data Lineage and it's a highly difficult problem that many large institutions are inter

This sort of chain of custody thing you're referring to is also known as Data Lineage and it's a highly difficult problem that many large institutions are interested in solving. I've talked to a number of them. Only a very few have managed to achieve good lineage even within their own organization, not to mention across companies.