A somewhat related issue is how banks currently take the lead in Europe as CAs. [Offering stale certificates that though are on-line verifiable at least]. Unfortunately banks have converted PKI into a new form of payment system (a.k.a. Four-corner Model), in spite of PKI not requiring transferal of anything between banks, as the relation (and transaction) is between the client and the relying party.
Fortunately at least the Swedish authorities begin to see that this is maybe not such a good thing for them. http://www.x-obi.com/OBI400/e-government-ID-A.Rundgren.pdf I doubt that the cost for OCSP-services of a large CA even accounts for 10% of the total. Anders
