Australian Smart Meter Data Shared Far and Wide

New submitter ferrisoxide.com writes "In Victoria (Australia), detailed information about electricity customers' power usage, which gives insights into when a house is occupied, is being shared with third parties including mail houses, debt collectors, data processing analysts and government agencies."

Comments

Color me surprised.

[MyLongNickName]

Color me surprised. I also expect campaign promises to be kept.

Lovely

[tqft]

Data security is such a good thing. Good thing the hackers didn't get it.

And with the data retention proposals of course no isp is going to be tempted to defray the cost with either on-site or outsourced datamining. And all storage is onsite and under their control.

From the FTA
"An Origin spokesman said the portal was fully compliant with Australian privacy legislation. He said the additional information requested about each household ''adds to the richness of the Origin Smart experience''.

Customer information can only be accessed by staff involved in billing. He said the electricity retailer only shared information with third parties when they had a ''legitimate business need to do so in order to meet our service obligations to our customers''."

"with third parties" the easiest way for the NSA to get all the data in the world would be to sell cheap datamining services as the Narly Stats Advisers.

And government and business wonder why people don't trust them.

Re:Lovely

[HeadlessNotAHorseman]

It might actually be illegal. In a nutshell, the Privacy Act requires that all personal information must be kept appropriately secure. If a company sends personal information to a third party, it requires the company to ensure that they keep the information secure too (e.g. by having a clause in the contract requiring them to meet the requirements of the Privacy Act). It is not possible to provide personal information to a USA company and still meet the requirements of the Privacy Act, because the USA's Patriot Act allows the US government to gain access to that information (without even informing the information owner).

You bloody fucking idiots!

[onyxruby]

You took a perfectly good cause and ruined it in the name of profit!!!! You have just fed the tinfoil hat crown and ruined smart meters world wide for years to come.

Let's think about this? Hey spouse, want to get a new smart meter? Hell no, I do that and the government will spy on me, the debt collectors will use it against me, do I look like I was born yesterday?

No one is going to want one of these things attached to their house now knowing how they have actually been used. Why the hell couldn't you leave well enough alone and use it for what it was actually meant for?

Smart meter technology could have been one of the greatest real world technological green technologies we have seen in a long time. Instead some short sighted, can't see the next week because tomorrow is in the way greedy bastards ruined it to sell their customers out to debt collectors!

Words cannot begin to describe how short sided and idiotic these people were. I'm sorry they just can't.

I've spent a fair amount of time in Melbourne, I thought well of the people down there. What the hell happened?

Re:Shocked

[Dr Max]

Info does = money and that is exactly why people put up smart meters. Most business have a peak demand charge when they buy bulk electricity, smart metering lets the customer know when and what causes that, so it can be minimized and greatly minimise his bill. It's also useful to the average joe consumer who wants to export power back to the grid. Maybe some one else that wants to buy power at the cheap off peak rate and store it in a battery bank for when the price is high. It allows for all kinds of different billing methods that can greatly reward taking stress of the network when it needs it. Smart metering is all about saving money by knowing what the network is doing. Everything you mentioned already exists, smart tv's that record the shows it thinks you'll like so you don't have to, smart browsers that remember your history have been around since the internet started, and smart shoes have been brought out by Nike for exercises freaks. Knowledge is power for all who embrace it. That said I most defiantly can not condone what Origin is doing with the customer's data, and can only assure you that they are the only retailer doing this. Choose the other guys (it's completely up to the customer) and they have very strict rules in place about who gets access. Origin are giant dicks, giving the rest of us a bad name. We have enough problems already trying to convince all the idiots that these setups have no more radiation than an iphone and their old meter.