This month's Cryptogram includes a good example of
a security analysis on the question of political
votes collection by software.  It was written by
Bruce Schneier and Paul Kocher, and starts and ends
in dollars, so it makes a good example of how things
are done (c.f., the discussion on the dollar value
of a life).

http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0404.html#4

As voting is (like ones life) a charged issue,
I'd suggest that it *not* be included in list of
normal users doing normal transactions.  Once the
dust settles on the US debates over election vote
counting, maybe then would be the time to re-address.

Which still leaves the question of how to define
and measure the normal user activity.  One way
would be to simply stab at the costs:

E.g., the normal user is doing a transaction.  That
transaction if breached, will result in a maximum $X
loss.  Also, if the entire session is opened up, then
the user herself will then be subject to a maximum
of $Y costs.

So, for example, $100 per transaction, and $1000 per
privacy breach, but please pick your own numbers.

iang

PS: I was going to post just the extract, but there
are also other good stories, relevent to the current
topics of the list.  Click on the above and look for
"Man-in-the-Middle Attack" and also "BeepCard".
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