In an interesting discussion on software tempest measures, Markus Kuhn <Markus.Kuhn@cl.cam.ac.uk> writes:
One more remark: This was so far unfunded research initiated by our private interest in the subject of compromising radiation. In this field, the available research literature is very close to zero (there are the van-Eck/Moeller/Smulder papers and that's it basically), and all the real knowledge is tightly guarded by the military and diplomatic community. We hope that developing commercial applications for compromising radiation will open the way to non-military funding and open research in this field.
People who are interested in communications and data security to the extent of arguing about the difference in security offered by 56 bit keys as compared to 128 bit keys ought to be worried about RF information leaks and tempest shielding. Perhaps similar justification can be used for the relevance of tempest research -- it is just the hardware half of assuring confidentiality of information. There should be a reasonably large supply of commercial funding candidates even given the 90 : 10 ratio of business interest in availability over confidentiality.
Copyright protections seems to be an interesting application.
Personally I view technology to assist copyright piracy a more interesting research goal! Candidate technologies include high bandwidth eternity services, anonymous remailers with sufficient bandwidth, pipenets, DC-nets, free software movements, countries with modern intellectual ownership rules like Argentina*, and undermining the power of the state so that state provided copyright enforcement susidies disappear. (* See my previous post: reposted news report "ARGENTINE SUPREME COURT RULES SOFTWARE PIRACY LEGAL"). I am not sure I want to see my computer narcing out over RF frequencies what software is installed -- once enabled for corporates there is the risk it will be used against individuals. This sounds about as (un)desirable as CPUs capable of running encrypted instruction streams, with per CPU keys loaded at manufacture enabling software to be purchased for your CPU only (and hence disempowering users who will thus be unable to even disassemble such code prior to running), or smart cards as modernized next generation dongles. Adam