gentleteblor

First off, thanks for taking the time to reply. This is very helpful.

I have some more questions about these smart cards (e.g. it sounds like unique public/private key pairs would be generated on each card which might not help with the master key style scenario HSMs are good for). I'm going to be looking into this for sure.

One more thing. I'm assuming FIPS 201-2 Level 3 cards have not been hacked (there were several smartcard hacks a few year ago e.g. http://www.securitytube.net/video/945

Does anyone have experience with these in their current or prior (CyptoStick) form? It seems to good to be true given the cost of other HSMs.

I mostly second this thought (our potential dystopia resulting from some combination of corporate and government misbehavior).

I'll just add that it isn't exactly science fiction. I think it's happening already, case in point, the frequent: NSA +- AT&T, Google, [corporation recently accused of collusion]