EFF: Smart meters pose threat to privacy
Summary: Smart metering is coming soon to your home. It will facilitate energy usage and tie consumption to peak demand energy costs and charge you more for power you use. The Electronic Frontier Foundation thinks it also invades your privacy.
Smart metering is coming soon to your home. It will facilitate energy usage and tie consumption to peak demand energy costs and charge you more for power you use. The goal is to change users energy usage to think about conservation measures that consumers can take action upon. Some examples are to change the time you use your dishwasher, washing machines and other appliances to reduce peak demand for power which should translate to lower power costs. Many of these appliances have time delay options.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has other concerns. In a press release issued yesterday, the EFF believe smart meter devices will collect data that is privacy sensitive.
"The data points gathered by advanced energy metering projects will allow the reconstruction of your life: when you wake up, when get home, when you go on vacation. It's not hard to imagine a divorce lawyer subpoenaing this information, or an insurance company interpreting the data in a way that allows it to penalize customers, or criminals intercepting the information to plan a burglary," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Lee Tien. "We must have meaningful rules to protect this extremely sensitive information."
The current generation of smart meters are not that capable, nor is the infrastructure of the utilities. The only thing the meters will do (right now) is track a consumer's rate (how many kilowatts) of power consumption and record the information at the utility's back office infrastructure. The meters do not connect to any appliances plugged in. In the future, wireless technology will connect appliances to meters that are connected to a smart applications linked to the meter. Back office infrastructure required to operate such an advanced tracking system would require a significant database design and architecture.
Additional resources:
EPIC Formal Comments to California Public Utility Commission
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Talkback
Reddy Kilowatt
Rationing
Not gonna have much sensitive data on the power lines when all it has access to is power usage! Much ado 'bout nuttin. And not new: we'v had the new meter now for almost two years; so they monitor my power usage. Can't save any money or anything the ONLY thing it'll do so far is read th meter so the guy doesn't have to go up the meter & look at it. Big deal!
Just another excuse to hose you down..
I assume there will still be competition.
As for how you used power when, I think your divorce lawyer won't be easily persuaded that it has anything to do with anything. But otherwise, data needs to be held secure, and probably only collected when it isn't current and maybe limited to what's actually needed for billing. And not misused by law enforcement, either.
At one time the fantasy was that your washing machine would communicate with an energy marketplace and buy just enough electricity to run itself when it became available at a cheap price...
Yes - that's still true as far as I know
Thanks for writing.
Doug
what are you agreeing with?
There is no electricity competion / choice in 99.99% of all of the U.S. of A. I don't have any choice in electricity providers beyond buying from the local utility (a monopoly) or creating my own on-site (simply unrealistic for that same 99.99% of Americans: insufficient wind and/or sun available on my personal property to generate enough to run the household; or at least not possible to do so at a competitive cost).
Those of you still backing the so-called "smart" appliances ... back in 2000 they told us smart appliances were here ... a decade later, pretty much all they've done is put an effin TV screen / email client in the door of the fridge. Added complexity, brutally limited utility, exorbitant prices. Stupid, wasteful, typical.
Even if "smart" appliances with the ability to selectively manage electricity usage ever show up on the market (they ain't here yet), it will be DECADES (20 years minimum) before more than a few percentage points of American households have them. Household appliances are expected to (and generally do) last decades. People just don't pop out and buy the latest two-thousand dollar washing machine every other year, regardless of the spiffy new "features" (of questionable utility) that are available.
The current implementation of smart meters are not "future proofing" the electrical delivery system as Doug seems to be implying. By time the "grid" (including, especially, consumers) are ready for that capability, todays smart meters will be decades out of date, and probably have had to have been upgraded multiple times. All at extra & unnecessary cost to the rate payers.
Today's smart meters are designed to "quantify" usage so that utilities can charge more. That's it, that's all. They do NOT provide real time information to the consumer, and do NOT interact / interface / integrate with the appliances that are in today's households.
It's just another typical modern American business ploy to add complexity to services without adding any net benefit to the consumer just for the purpose of pulling more money out of our pockets.
Shortsighted foolishness
And there is the small problem of "common business records" - primarily billing. All of you ostriches with your heads in the sand need to wake up and realize that ANY business record "used in the ordinary course of business" is available to ANY member of law enforcement with nothing more than a subpoena, which any District Attorney can generate without the need to see a judge.
So keep in mind, if it leaves your house, if it becomes part of a business transaction, the government can obtain the information with only the slightest of procedural formalities.
something to hide
Privacy law, constitution etc... are mainly use by criminals who have something hide.
so Takalok, how many skeletons in your closet?
Hiding the skeletons?
It isn't whether you are paranoid. It is whether you are paranoid enough.
Re
Almost ...
Not sure what a divorce lawyer could
As for planning a robbery, well there are easier ways to figure out when people leave the house, it is called casing the joint. Just do a weeks worth of surveillance and you will know when people are gone. Of course the brazen ones will rob you when your home anyway.
I think the better goal, and actually I think it is more of a benefit for the consumer, is so that they don't need to install meters if they want to use off peak power. Growing up my dad used off peak power. We had two 150gal hot water heaters, and they only ran at 11pm local time. So 300 gallons of water would heat up over night, and would stop at like 6 or 7am. That hot water would have to last through the day. We would run the dishwasher after 11pm, so that the water it would use would be replaced and reheated. We also had in floor heat that would kick on after 11pm, which would help in reducing the amount of fuel burned overnight.
It was good, because it really taught us to conserve, as what we had for hot water had to make it through the day.
I respectfully disagree
That strikes me a a bit silly. I shower, wash dishes, use the electric weed eater, etc when and how and where it's convenient for ME. If we can't even plan our day around our own needs, there is something very wrong with this country.
If the utility companies have trouble providing power during peak usage, they need to add more power plants. If water is running short, drill more wells. We pay handsomely for water/gas/electricity. It should be there when we need it and we should not have to worry over what time of day we use it. There won't be any "smart meters" chatting with the appliances in my home. Ever.
A freeze on Texas smart meters...
"In the Dallas area the grid operator, Oncor, has already said it will start a Smart Meter Verification Plan after some of the 700,000 customers with new smart meters complained, according to the Dallas Morning News".
The electric companies are blaming the "unusually cold weather." I live in Dallas, it's not that cold!
These probably won't be consumer friendly
In a monopoly consumer cost is calculated based on operating revenue plus a healthy profit for the monopoly company. Not on a price a free market sets.
Last year we spent about 10,000 USD making our home more efficient. We paid for independent testing from more than two companies and the results all agreed. After our efforts we were using 25% less energy than before we made the renovations. The local energy company wanted to raise their rates across the board by 15%. The local government forced them to keep their rates steady, and give discounts for people like us who used less energy. In other words, we were only to pay for the energy we used and if we used less we should get charged less.
The energy company was forced to comply but they turned around and added a delivery charge. So they gave us a 25% discount on usage but increased our delivery by 35%. So in other words, we are paying 15% more this year for our energy than we did last year. This lines up nicely with the original 15% the energy company wanted to raise their rates to. Our neighbors did not make any improvements so their delivery charge was only the 15% increase. Apparently it is cheaper to "deliver" energy to an energy inefficient house than a more energy efficient house.
We the consumers didn't win. Personally I spent 10 grand that I should not have. I now have an energy efficient house that costs just as much to run as my energy inefficient neighbor. Because it is a monopoly , you can't change your energy company to get a better service. I guess the environment sort of wins but that doesn't help my wallet.
I don't see these "smart meters" as working for consumers. The energy companies will probably sell the information to data mining firms who will repackage the data for divorce lawyers, marketer,retailers, etc.
Yes you can get a lot of information from energy data. If you are in the middle of a divorce and your spouse's energy usage goes way up, you can deduce they have moved a boyfriend or girlfriend into the house. This can be used as leverage in a divorce for example. After all if the data is broken down by what device uses what energy it is easy to figure out who is using it. Hot water showers, suddenly double. Wash machine energy use doubles. Somebody just increased the size of their household.
RE: EFF: Smart meters pose threat to privacy
The More detailed...
But, the criminal could just drive by a few times and get that information.
However, failure to protect more detaile dinformation from disclosure could allow criminals both Government Snoops and ohterwise from knowing when the best time to gain access to your home might be.
In this case Privacy *is* most assuredly an issue.
And, no, no warrant is required under the patriot law *if* law enforcement is willing to lie and say your are a suspected terrorist...
Mike Sr.
RE: EFF: Smart meters pose threat to privacy
The only one reasons the power companies want smart meters:
Utility Co. convenience/profits.
RE: EFF: Smart meters pose threat to privacy
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