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Is Your Electricity Meter Spying On You?
lee1 writes "If you have a 'smart meter,' it is collecting data that can reveal when you wake up, when you leave for work and come home, when you go on vacation and when you take a shower. This data is commercially valuable and, if sold to third parties, can lead to privacy invasion on a massive scale. The California Public Utility Commission is reacting to the gas and electric company's mass installation of these meters with new proposals for strong privacy protections."
These are what keep us SAFE because it lets power companies notify law enforcement when our neighbors are growing marijuana! We NEED these to keep us SAFE!
"Going to war without the French is like going deer hunting without your accordion." ~General Norman Schwarzkopf
People need to realize that any device that can collect and transmit data will probably be used to collect more data than they should. That data will PROBABLY end up being sold, simply because people are willing to pay for it. Since it is our data, why can't we demand a cut of the profits?
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
is signalling the CIA
We told you not to go and load Debian on it, but would you listen? No, of course not.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
The lesson here: any data that is collectable will be collected. Any data that is usable will be used.
It would be entirely naive to think that law enforcement would restrain themselves from using data that is right there for the taking. All it takes is a little strong-arming of the company in charge of the data.
That includes consumption of electricity, water, gas, internet, cable-tv, UPS-deliveries, and anything else someone else pumps into your house.
No, attitudes on privacy aren't diverging. You're just misrepresenting them.
I post on Facebook what I choose to post. Therefore, Facebook posts are not a privacy violation (unless they ignore my privacy settings) because the act of making those posts was an act of explicit consent to share that information with the people I chose to share it with. Yes, stupid people will post stupid things that allow others to invade their privacy, but you can't legislate away stupidity.
By contrast, I don't choose what information my water meter collects. Therefore, the water company should not be allowed to disclose any information that it collects. Similarly, Facebook should not be allowed to disclose anything that I don't explicitly allow them to disclose. And so on.
Disclosure of private information should require explicit consent. The deeper you hide that consent in some service agreement, the bigger the privacy violation you're committing. Simple as that.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
The flaw in your logic is that not everyone uses facebook. Facebook is voluntary, the electric meter is not.
I've worked for a firm that collects this data. The technology, as it's exists now, is incapable of the level of analysis described. The data is flow is massive and only summation for billing is viable. Even then, "sanitization" of data is common practices. While protective legislation and guidance is encouraged before it goes too far, there are far greater violations including IP address mapping between logins on identifying solutions (gmail, yahoo mail) and apparent "anonymous" sites. Flash Persisted Objects being one aspect, IP + browser fingerprinting, and collaboration between marketing organizations and online retailers are bigger risks. The part that sucks is we can't opt out of smart metering. Security is quite solid but if I had any advice to the PUCs it would be to mandate truck roles for power turn off / turn down. The current broadcast model on smart meters combined with the potential to brute force the master key for broadcasting means someone with a bit of knowledge and desire could inject into the meshed network a flag to shut down broad swaths of power consumers, which in turn could lead to a surge back into the grid causing other catastrophic outages. GM72
"Like odors, IR leaking into the public domain needs no warrant."
Nope. An infrared scan constitutes a search. They would have to get a warrant, first, in order to do the thermal imaging.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyllo_v._United_States