Answering questions about information flow might be interesting in this regard. You could quantify what sources of information an application retrieves and how

Answering questions about information flow might be interesting in this regard. You could quantify what sources of information an application retrieves and how far through the application that information traverses. Downsides are that it's very difficult to get a binary verdict out of something like that, even as a consumer of the information. You see a report that says "it takes video data and streams it out to the Internet!" and if the app purports to be a flashlight app that's bad, but if it's Skype then that's expected. Maybe the additional insight into "where does my data go in this app" would be useful? Maybe people could start asking "why do you need to take my contacts and pass them to the network, why don't you just work with the data on my device?"