Hibernate version: 2.1.6

I've been scratching my head for some time now trying to implement some kind of "hierarchical ACL" to define permissions between persistent objects of different kinds.

Among others, I have the following entities:

• Profiler - logged in user
• Profilee - person beeing profiled
• Profile - single profile created by a Profiler on a Profilee

The implementation must handle the following:

• A Profiler X can only see Profilees that he/she has "read" access to - either directly or via a Profiler Y to which Profiler X has "read" access to, and which in turn has "read" access to the Profilees.
• A Profiler X can only modify Profilees that he/she has "write" access to - either directly or via a Profiler Y to which Profiler X has "write" access to, and which in turn has "write" access to the Profilees.
• A Profiler can only see Profiles that he/she has "read" access to - either directly or via Profilers/Profilees he/she has "read" access to.
• A Profiler can only modify Profiles that he/she has "read" access to - either directly or via Profilers/Profilees he/she has "read" access to.

How should I map those objects together? And even more delicate: How do I define the HQL for retrieving the readable/writable Profilees/Profiles for a given Profiler?