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Smart Grid Could Pose Threat To Privacy
Presto Vivace writes "Brian Krebs of the Washington Post reports on a study jointly released Tuesday by the Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner and the Future of Privacy Forum. It seems that in the process of collecting all that feedback about energy use, utility companies will inevitably collect a great deal of information about us. From the article: 'Instead of measuring energy use at the end of each billing period, smart meters will provide this information at much shorter intervals, the report notes. Even if electricity use is not recorded minute by minute, or at the appliance level, information may be gleaned from ongoing monitoring of electricity consumption such as the approximate number of occupants, when they are present, as well as when they are awake or asleep. For many, this will resonate as a "sanctity of the home" issue, where such intimate details of daily life should not be accessible.'"
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If I had a crooked friend at the power company, he could tell me when someone in a house I want to rob usually goes to work and also when they do so on a given day.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Personally - I really don't care what kind of dodgy information they could gleen from a smart meter. I only really care about the fact that power could (or will here in Oz) cost more.
Actually, I wouldn't have ANY problem at all paying a little extra for these meters (also here in Aus) if they used the data gathered to make a more efficient energy grid and this in turn helped us reduce emissions and made us more environmentally friendly. I would have very big problems with this if it was used to simply line the pockets of companies while not changing or improving in any other way.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
The only difference in my at home power usage vs my away power usage is basically a cfl and a TV. I presume that would be drowned out by the AC cycling, the fridge cycling, various fluctuating draws from computers doing updates and interfacing with the internet (ingoing and outgoing, 24/7), etc.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Personally - I really don't care what kind of dodgy information they could gleen from a smart meter. I only really care about the fact that power could (or will here in Oz) cost more.
Or that nobody has been home for a couple of days so you are probably on vacation and your home would be a good target for robbery! Yeah, that's worth saving a few bucks a month on electricity.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I would think that the use of electricity usage data should play out the same way, but who knows!
I knows!
Granting warrants for excessive electricity use is routine in the USA.
Here's one from 2004: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0330044pot1.html
Here's one from 2009: http://hamptonroads.com/node/510056
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Yeah, it's never too much of a problem until it affects you.
What if you live in an apartment and have a friend or family member come stay with you for an extended period of time and you suddenly get charged an occupant violation fee because your utilities are being monitored by the complex manager? Seeing at how gung-ho about fines the complex I just moved from is, I don't see that being too far-fetched of a scenario, especially if your utilities are included in your rent.
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
Or, more practically, use nighttime power to charge up your ultracapacitor (those will be coming out in full force shortly), which you will then use during the day. It's cost effective and privacy effective.
We must decide... Will we remain Luddites or join the hive mind? Attempting to both leverage technology and leverage privacy is an exercise in futility. Those choosing to straddle the fence rather than embracing one or the other will eventually find that someone else has already decided for them.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
What they need to do is broadcast the present price of electricity and have the meter bill accordingly. Then get the total bill every month. This enables the "consumer" to regulate their usage to reduce cost (smoothing usage as the utilities want). It also avoids the need for large amounts of data sent back. There are usually simple solutions, and the fact that companies don't use the simple solutions generally points to an agenda other than what is claimed.
Anything that is internet-connected and useful poses a threat to your privacy. Period.
I am willing to accept that trade-off, especially since 95% of the privacy stories on YRO are overblown.
Oh no, the power company can determine my peak power usage. They can determine that I leave in the morning and get home at night.
In exchange, the smart grid promises some big benefits. As usual, a trade-off.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
PG&E is using (for electricity) a GE I-120 smartmeter with a Silver Spring Networks interface. (Installer said they plan to install the associated network on the poles shortly, after which no more meter readers wandering the neighborhood.)
According to the meter's description on GE's site it uses IP and "industry standard crypto" over a two way radio link to a network running their software. It can be remotely tweaked and have software upgrades remotely loaded. (I can hear the cypherpunks booting up already.)
It records and reports high-time-resolution information about the utility use. It can be used to shut the power off in case of "billing trouble". It doesn't do net metering. Instead it treats backfeeding the net as a sign of cheating - an old mechanical-meter hack consisting of unplugging and inverting the meter to "run it backward" a few days per month. (It records the events around the reversal - unplug, replug-inverted, unplug, replug-normal - with high time resolution, to be used as evidence if it goes to court.)
If you want to do net metering once this is installed you have to get the power company to come out again and install another meter, set up for "two-way metering".
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Or leave a note on the door for the milkman.
Or maybe the mail piling up is a sign.
Why is it that guys like you claim the whole counter-terrorism thing is a way for the goverment to scare people, when you scare yourself far better? Watch out, I can track your /. account and tell when you are on holiday.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Hopefully U.S. anti-marijuana laws will be declared unconstitutional (where was Congress given authority to completely ban a naturally-growing plant?) before this Smart Grid is implemented, and then it won't matter if you are using grow lights or not.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
http://www.law.ualberta.ca/centres/ccs/news/?id=332
"The Drug Unit asked Enmax, the local electricity provider, to install a digital recording ammeter (DRA) to record power consumption in Gomboc’s house. Enmax complied without insisting on a warrant. After five days, Enmax gave the police a graph that showed Gomboc’s use of electricity was consistent with running a grow operation. [...] At trial, the Crown conceded that police could not have obtained a search warrant without the data from Enmax."
So, at least in Canada, not only has someone already been subject to a search warrant over electrical usage but the appeals court has ruled it is legal to base a search warrant on someone's electrical usage.
Smart grid is really needed to provide the ability to support electric cars without taking out the power system, and to provide peak-demand load management for people who use power at peak times (ie. businesses, during the day). People aren't going to run washing machines at 2AM in the summertime to avoid a $0.50 fee and get smelly clothes since nobody will be around to flip the laundry into the dryer.
The problem at the residential level is that other than the electric cars that nobody wants there is minimal value to shifting residential power demand for most people -- their demand is at night, since there aren't many housewives hanging out at home anymore. From what I've read, energy usage isn't the problem -- the problem is providing sufficient power during periods of peak demand. Additionally, many, many places don't have the necessary last-mile power infrastructure to handle the electric cars that are supposedly going to drive increased consumer demand.
Plus, nobody has plugin electric cars, and the excessive costs will keep it that way. Why would you buy a $40,000 car that is similar to a compact car and requires upgrading your home electrical system to own? Just buy a diesel Jetta, which has a far lower TCO. Hell, hybrid diesel-electric cars are probably more practical.
Upgrading the infrastructure of every side street in every city is going to cost billions and take years. And it will meet resistance -- residential neighborhoods with trees and overhead lines will find the new supply lines also mean that the utility company will eviscerate every tree.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Add up those few bucks a month for a year. Also maybe take into account the benefit to society (and thus to you) from improved grid efficiency and fewer blackouts
Now take the value of stuff you'd lose in a robbery. Multiply that by the probability that someone will steal your electricity usage data and use it to rob your house in the same year.
I'd be pretty surprised if the expected cost of this extremely unlikely hypothetical robbery makes smart meters not worthwhile.
bunch of arm-waving idiocy.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
"Eight armed narcs raided the Dagy home on March 19 and found absolutely nothing. No evidence of pot anywhere, not even stashed in the children's toys. Seems that the coppers mistook the family's constant use of the dishwasher, washer/dryer, three computers, four ceiling fans, and other electronic devices as evidence of a felony drug operation. Oops. The Dagys--Mom's a homemaker and Dad's a general manager of 21 Shell stations--would like an apology from the Carlsbad Police Department. Sadly, we'd recommend that the Dagys not hold their collective breath."
I hate drug cops and homeland security. They keep performing these heinous searches and "eating out the substance" of our citizens
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
Where can I buy 600W solar cells for 200.00?
I think we're going to have to accept that a number of entities are going to have all kinds of information about us. One potential solution is to create meaningful regulations that balance individual interests/rights against those of corporate entities (corporate in the broadest sense, inc. state entities). Perhaps something along the lines of the confidentiality that exists between an individual and various professionals/clergymen.
Last time i checked most people carry a cellphone which authorities can use to locate your person at all times.
BUT electricity usage can be used to get a warrant to search your home:
"An unusually high electricity bill alerted police to a possible marijuana-growing operation, the warrant said."
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Honestly, what are the chances that someone from the electric company is going to monitor your house, waiting to rob it? OK, now how much greater are they with this smart meter? If I worked at the electric company, and I wanted to rob your house, all I'd need is your address, and I could physically monitor your house to see when you're on vacation.
In fact, this kind of reminds me of the xkcd comic:
http://xkcd.com/538/
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
for PEBKAC.
In the days of mechanical telephone switches, the telco swore up and down that my mother hadn't paid the bill. When they sent out the guy to carry out the disconnect order, he said she could make one last phone call. She showed him the canceled check and told him he could make it to his boss, or he could disconnect the phone and never show his face on the property again. He said sorry, lady, I got my orders.
The Nuremberg trials invalidated that excuse. (Aaaaand Godwin's Law is validated for this thread)
They tried to make nice later. Mom told them to leave, or face criminal trespass charges. And for the next 16 years, we made do with no telephone. Mom and Dad finally relented, post-Bell breakup, when we had two elderly grandparents who were taking turns being ill.
Now, four carrier buy-outs later, my parents are having "billing trouble" again while the new system owners figure out what the hell they're doing.
There are already tons of service providers we use (bank, credit card, hospital, ISP, cable company, cell phone company, etc.) that have a similar or greater amount of data. How does this pose any new problems?
I'd certainly like to see more clearly defined legal standards for how this kind of data may be used, but I'd assume that the tangled mess we have now would apply to the data that the power companies gather as well.
It's rather easy to find stolen electricity. Total the usage of the meters in an area vs. how much power was used there. If there is a difference of more than the reasonable margin of error, they have ways to isolate where this is very easy (especially since the thieves are constantly using).
With SmartMeters, stealing electricity will be virtually impossible. Within minutes theft of power is spotted and a truck roll can be sent out within the next day (if not sooner) if it continues.
Yeah, it's never too much of a problem until it affects you. What if you live in an apartment and have a friend or family member come stay with you for an extended period of time and you suddenly get charged an occupant violation fee because your utilities are being monitored by the complex manager? Seeing at how gung-ho about fines the complex I just moved from is, I don't see that being too far-fetched of a scenario, especially if your utilities are included in your rent.
You violate the terms of your lease and you are fined. What's your point here?
Why can't the power company provide the information the consumer needs, and the consumer has a controller in their house that manages appliances and electricity use (without data feedback)? I don't recall the gas companies asking for control of our thermostats, so why should this be different*? You could opt-in to have your controller send data to the power company (or have the meter reader get the data when he comes around), but there would be no NEED for the power company to get information back. The power company could closely monitor each block if they want more data on what areas are helping with the smart grid effort without concerns over privacy.
I've heard about the smart grid for years and I know I can't be the first to ask this- maybe I'm missing something?
*Brownouts would be the main reason, but if everyone is getting real-time cost information (and set their controllers accordingly), the power companies would see a much better response when they jack up the rates during peak hours. I expect the system will work a lot better once they have a proper feedback loop.
My webcomic
I "knew" a person that "grew" marijuana.
I once asked him, generally speaking, where he grew.
What he told me was that he grew in a barn up in the mountains. Why in a barn, I asked him. Because this far out from the city, the electric meters were not able to reach cell towers, and thus could not report daily usage rates. The meter reader came out once a month so all they had was monthly usage figures (one of them old "spinny" type meters). He did this because the daily usage data was used to look for electric usage that followed a specific pattern, primarily a 11-12 hour peak usage period that would indicate growing lights. That, and the fact that nobody had a reason to be parked across the street with a FLIRgun or flying helicopters overhead. That is what he claimed, anyways.
I also once met a chap that used many rolls of copper house wiring, all spliced together into a coil, all laid out under the soil just below high-tension powerlines. Inductive leeching provided his entire grow operation with power--almost completely untraceable as well. At least that is what he claimed...
Part Deux:
They are placing new technology on top of an aging infrastructure instead of improving the actual aging infrastructure. This will not improve power reliability, the segment was already growing and did not need government intervention, and the cost will be passed on to the consumer, increasing the cost of everything in the name of a "green grid".
I work on the grid. Anything more will identify me, so I will stay vague.
The goal of the smart grid is to make a more efficient usage of our electricity. It encourages the homeowner to use their peak electricity usage on the off-hours when electricity is cheaper. Great in theory, but this is all marketing and lawyering and it will hurt the consumer for the benefit of utilities and companies like mine.
How do you improve electrical efficiency?
The same way you improve efficiency in every other system: By increasing the cost. If your electricity costs more, then you will be more conscientious about how much electricity you use. Then, you will buy more expensive electronics that have the "smart grid" capabilities.
Utilities have a government-sanctioned monopoly on their service area. Because of this monopoly status, the Utility has to get approval to raise their rates, usually through the county or state legislature. Many states have Investor Owned Utilities (IOUs) which are in it to make money. They always want to increase their profit. (IOUs are similar to national banks, always looking for profit, As opposed to co-ops, which are more like a "community credit union". I love those guys.)
Utilities want to institute Tiered pricing in every single home. It means that you will be charged 2x during the day vs the night. The utility buys "In Home Displays" that plug into your home outlet and displays the current electricity cost. Some systems are based on a pre-pay system, so the IHD will also display how much energy they have left before they are cut off. (Mainly for poorer, high-risk customers)
Tiered Pricing: How is it cheaper?
Almost all of the utilities out there buy their electricity from a power generation company. They purchase electricity based on tiers. If they buy 499MW in on one month, it is one price, but if they hit 500MW on a single day, their cost for the entire month costs double.
An installation of a Load Control Unit (the one that controls your furnace/AC/Water Heater) can easily cost $1M. (each Load Control Unit costs $100 or so, labor to install is another $50 - $100, and you have to be at the home when the utility installs it...). At a certain user conference, a utility announced that a single load shed event paid for the entire system installation. (I kinda find his announcement hard to believe, but I won't complain) However, their rates did not change. The people served by this utility did not see a rate reduction. They only noticed that their house became warmer for no noticeable reason. The real reason was that the utility turned off their air conditioner for an hour to decrease their costs.
Remember, they need to go to the city/county/state to increase their billing rate. Do you really think that they will go to the legislature, tell them that they saved a bunch of money, and now they can charge less? That would never happen.
Here is another kicker: Thanks to EISA Section 1306, (implemented in 2007 by GW, paved the way for the "Smart Grid"), utilities can increase the rate on any system with a "Smart Grid" to recoup the cost of the Smart Meters. If a utility installs our Smart Grid system, they already recoup their costs just by firing the meter reads. So, not only will they save money by firing the meter readers, they don't have to pay for it because they can charge the homeowner more.
Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics
The "smart grid" will supposedly create 10,000 jobs. They are considering a "job" as a single person touching a part of the system. Even though I still have a job, and my job existed before this system, I am part of this "10,000 jobs created". In fact, more
I use to keep saltwater reef aquariums. I even used "grow lights" over them. In the hobby we hear about people getting their doors kicked in at 6am on a Sunday from time to time... Seems a reef tank needs light 12 hours a day just like...
The story that you reference, I wonder if the cops kicked out all the drywall while they inspected. I've heard of that and there's no compensation.
The Dagys--Mom's a homemaker and Dad's a general manager of 21 Shell stations--would like an apology from the Carlsbad Police Department.
The rest of the world would like an apology from the Dagys for their unrestrained use energy. I guess we won't hold our breath either.
How do I mod this guy troll? This poor family was raided by 8 armed men, probably scaring the ____ out of them, and all he can think about it the 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 degree increase they might possibly be causing. (Assuming global warming is caused by California's use of hydroelectric power - which seems unlikely.)
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
20 of 25 raids that day resulted in illegal drugs being found.
What smelly place did you pull that statistic from?
You are right the law needs to be changed, but also the whole warrant process. "They use lots of electricity" should be rejected by judges. It's not a valid reason to suspect marijuana usage & issue a search warrant
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
I think his point is that leases are meant to be broken on occasion in a no harm, no foul sort of way. If you have ever read an apartment lease I am guessing you would know that nearly everyone violates an apartment lease from the day they move in. The problem is that the complex needs to protect itself, so they must write the lease in absolute terms so that they can act when a real issue is going on. This prevents many clauses from being removed yet produces many violations that are "false positives" of the intended purpose. Now I would say that the free market would weed out the landlords that try this pretty fast but it would still be shitty to get stuck with one for a whole year if you didn't do your research.
I am saying this as a landlord. Maybe I am too reasonable because I lease to people my age and understand what is going to happen =/
I am not so sure having extra occupants in an apartment with free electricity is a no harm situation. The harm would be the extra cost of the extra power used by the extra occupant that is supposed to be covered by the extra occupant fee.
People get upset when you hold them to the lease because leases are ridiculous - you shouldn't need your landlord's permission to have a guest over in your home. Often the full terms aren't even presented to until after you have paid money to reserve the apartment, and you have no real negotiating power. These are unconscionable contracts of adhesion.
Stated like a true parrot.
1) Quit listening to the propaganda from the Big Brother, police state.
2) If you think that potent cannabis is something new, where have you been for the last few millennia? I remember Sativa strains from the 70's and 80's that were far superior to the (often) hydroponically grown strains of today. I hear crap like "It's not like the marijuana you smoked in your college days. It's worse than HEROIN now!" from police spokespeople and the like. Ignorance or malice... it's still false.
3) Cannabis does not have dangerous synergistic effects with alcohol. Maybe you'd peter out on drinking earlier in the evening but it isn't dangerously toxic. (unlike the synergistic effects of, say, barbiturates or tranquilizers with alcohol)
4) Cannabis does not cause psychosis. There are all kinds of studies with false correlations. Just because samples of schizophrenics and psychotics also tend to use cannabis and other drugs doesn't mean it caused, or even exacerbated the imbalance.
You really ought to get out more. Go to a place where a sizable portion of the population uses cannabis every day of their lives (like Canada, for example). They have jobs, businesses, families and homes. They aren't psychotic, they aren't driving dangerously and they aren't dead. Hell, I know people who have been smoking cannabis for over 50 years and it hasn't done them the harm that has been promised.
It's not completely harmless, but harmless enough that it doesn't warrant the prejudice that it gets.
Cannabis itself won't make a loser out of you... it's just that in America, they will see to it that it does.
Privacy is already gone for the vast majority of people on the planet. The best anyone can hope for now is anonymity.
5, 10, 15 years from now, you'll be able to snap a picture of someone, upload it to Google Faces, and get back every single picture of that person on the internet. Some enterprising person will write a bit of software that reads the tags and connects them to public information sources about the person. There will probably be software that snatches up tons of publicly available writing samples of the person and compares it to a "signature" that has a reasonable degree of accuracy in figuring out who that person is. There will be other tools that let anyone do some basic snooping through archives to find other references to that person from other sources (like a Google stalk, but a bit more in-depth and the tool will tell clueless people how to be more efficient in tracking someone). If the footage from surveillance systems ever becomes public, you can bet that someone will figure out how to track an individual's movements. It will, in short, be trivial to get a work-up on people that's about as complete as you can imagine any private investigator, but you'll be able to do it on the fly, from home.
Our privacy is already gone, most of us just don't know it yet. The best that we can do is to make as sure as possible that all this surveillance data that is being collected becomes part of the public domain which will ironically help limit abuse.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
You are buying electricity, it's not private. DOn't lie it? Make your own electricity.
It's like saying McDonalds tracking you buying a soda from them is someone a loss of privacy.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on