It's going to be interesting, from a security standpoint. One of the original cracks on the PS3 was via the USB stack. I'd not go plugging my computers or phones into jacks that I don't necessarily control. I can see a market for buffering devices that allow power through, and perhaps do power negotiation for you, but that do not allow data traffic. I believe these devices already exist. though I don't know how sophi…
Even worse than USB is Firewire, which, if I am not mistaken, gives direct memory access to whatever device is connected. However, manufacturers are already realising that blindly trusting every USB host is a bad idea. For example, iPhones now ask if you want to trust if you connect to a previously unknown computer via USB. If you chose not to, your iPhone will take power, but won't allow data access. Therefore it's…
But keep in mind that this is something that a host actually has to turn on for every single device on the bus[1], but probably most drivers are lazy and just unconditionally enable this globally.
[1] See PhysicalRequestFilter in the OHCI specs http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/6/1/161ba512-40e2-4...