EFF on 'Smart Meters'

Post #323,132 by Ashton 3/19/10 2:34:03 PM Reply	EFF on 'Smart Meters' http://www.eff.org/d...-put-privacy-risk They're coming to bucolic Kenwood, even.. Time to ensure that they don't connect to the ODBC-III spy in your car (along with your employer's key-logger and maybe your Tektronix 454A.) New "Smart Meters" for Energy Use Put Privacy at Risk News Update by Lee Tien The ebb and flow of gas and electricity into your home contains surprisingly detailed information about your daily life. Energy usage data, measured moment by moment, allows the reconstruction of a household's activities: when people wake up, when they come home, when they go on vacation, and maybe even when they take a hot bath. California's PG&E is currently in the process of installing "smart meters" that will collect this moment by moment dataÂ750 to 3000 data points per month per householdÂfor every energy customer in the state. These meters are aimed at helping consumers monitor and control their energy usage, but right now, the program lacks critical privacy protections. That's why EFF and other privacy groups filed comments with the California Public Utilities Commission Tuesday, asking for the adoption of strong rules to protect the privacy and security of customers' energy-usage information. Without strong protections, this information can and will be repurposed by interested parties. It's not hard to imagine a divorce lawyer subpoenaing this information, an insurance company interpreting the data in a way that allows it to penalize customers, or criminals intercepting the information to plan a burglary. Marketing companies will also desperately want to access this data to get new intimate new insights into your family's day-to-day routineÂnot to mention the government, which wants to mine the data for law enforcement and other purposes. . . .
Post #323,136 by dmcarls 3/19/10 4:06:06 PM Reply	They could just merge that data... with your pictures! http://www.islandpac...mits-putting.html [...] although, "Without elaborating, she said images of people who are not targets of an investigation are "not kept." (You're not a target, are you?)
Post #323,140 by Another Scott 3/19/10 7:55:03 PM Reply	Zounds. :-(
Post #323,169 by Ashton 3/21/10 12:39:49 AM Reply	Mixed take on this. Even the marijuana rubric has mixed 'ends' -- amidst a bucket of worms: the US is the mondo consumer which begets the Mexicam gangs (and presumably their search for in-US 'depots' etc.) It's all about the fact that so many Muricans find Murica so toxically-stressful that they need chemical nostrums to bear it all. But who wants to discuss the absurdities of Prohibition/the War-on-drugs, one more time? Not I. As to the toxic-waste dumpers, that's so execrable on so many levels, I'd OK the 10 KW Laser attachment to the camera and a live link to the overhead drone-with-Gatling-gun. Forests are Large. There's not enough $$ for live person rounds of every square meter -- maybe once a year? Guess I'm willing to chalk this up to one more consequence of overpopulation and the species' abject inability to find the guts to confront same. Soylent Green? May have to settle for the cheesy -Yellow at this rate. (Whenever I'm around LA, I sometimes overlay the current locale with scenes from Blade Runner (only without the happy fantasy of the missing folk having blithely gone 'off-world' -- after utterly trashing this one.)) Kinda lends visual perspective to our lemming-like roots.

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