Too much information and not enough opinion huh?
The remarks so far seem to suggest that there is a lot of ignorance about would the implications of rolling out a huge monitoring network like this.
Smart meters can be simplified as another computer box in your house connected to a network and their purpose is to gather information about gas/electricity/water in a huge database for use by the government and utilities and others. Your say in what is collected, for whom and to what use it will put…well you may not get a say at all.
Most responses seem pretty unconcerned.
‘Hey if it means cheaper bills I don’t care what people know about me.’
‘They can’t tell much from how much I use the bathroom or the microwave’
‘They know everything about me anyway’
‘It is not worse than cable or an ISP collecting information’
I am sure the corporations and government agencies will take some satifisfaction at this pretty low level of concern about personal privacy and allowing them to collect all this data without much scrutiny.
I am guessing this complacency is because it is generally assumed that it will all come right in the end after a lot of law suits and class actions test these activities against the laws and the constitution.
Well, it is always good to look on the bright side.
I would have thought the recent revelations regarding the wholesale monitoring of the Internet by intelligence services might have given cause for a little more thought on the subject of privacy. The information gleaned by smart meters will not be lost on those data hungry organisations.
I personally would like to own the data collected about myself and I resent it being gathered without my consent.