Watching the video I could feel the propagandizing and extreme hyperbole was a bit overwhelming, but at the end of it I wondered if there might be some causes for concern. Issues like the almost certain poor implementation of wireless security, the possible manipulation of data, and the guaranteed loss of jobs seemed possibly legitimate. So, I felt it worthy of asking the Teeming Millions their take on it.
The advent of the motorcar provoked similar complaints and predictions (“Society’s going to Hell in a handbasket”). Every new technology has a backlash. Perhaps 10% might be justified, but not all.
It did have an Angry Old Luddite flavor to the rant.
=)
My general impression (and the reply I gave to my elderly relative) was that it was overblown and not to be concerned. But after I sent that e-mail I thought it wise to poll the folks here on it.
I’ve got bigger concerns over these so-called smart thermostats that the power company wants to give you for free, but will allow them to shut off your air conditioner when the grid is at peak demand.
One thing that stands out is the claim that power companies can tell, thru time and usage, if you are home or not. Definitely not true. I just left on an errand and I turned nothing off and when I got back, I turned nothing on.
Besides, who cares if the power company knows my detailed usage – as long as the total is accurate for billing. Billing by the time of day could save me money.
Also, the amount of data storage required to keep long-term detailed records of usage by the second or minute times the number of customers can add up to an incredible amount of data. And unless mandated by the gummit, why store it?
I always thought that the data was sent over the power lines, not over the air. I could be wrong, but if you have a wire already from customer to company, why use wireless? I think he may be confusing RF with wireless.
smart meters will allow determining number of people staying in the household at any given time with some reasonable accuracy. If the government decides to take a page out of North Korean playbook and force you to register any time you sleep on a couch that is not yours, they will be able to detect such events without bothering with primitive, labor intensive Commie methods.
Whether or not you want to make it easier for TSA and similar institutions to easily track who is and is not staying where may depend on your political orientation. For that matter, I am sure some registered Democrats out there wouldn’t mind accepting daily cavity searches as long as by acquiescence they prove themselves superior to crazy Republican nutjobs.
Not really, and even if they did, they still wouldn’t have a clue as to who. I mean, if they wanted to be that intrusive, they already have means available to them that would tell them a lot more, a lot more easily. Like just watching front doors to see who goes in and out. Or following Twitter and Facebook updates.
Data storage is dirt cheap. Even if you don’t have an effective way to monetize it now (data mine to determine who has old/inefficient AC systems and sell that data to AC companies?), I can guarantee you that someone will figure out a way later, may as well have the data there for when you do.
If the government decided to go that way, I would say we have bigger problems than the smart meters. I would think that some pretty simple countermeasures like leaving lights on at random times and taking an extra shower or three on random days would be enough to make any analysis of my data useless anyway.
[bolding mine]
Well, yeah. The Government* *could decide to do any number of things that suck at any given time. The problem with “Big Brother” rants like these is that it’s a huge leap to assume that just because some new technology exists, The Government will automatically use it against us. I find it hard to believe anybody is seriously interested in doing so.
*“The Government” in these scenarios usually being a single, unified, yet somehow vague and faceless entity.
The problem that I have with these things is that they give them to you for ‘free’ then charge you a buck or two a month. So not only can they change the way my AC works, but they charge me for the privilege. They did the same thing a few years ago to get people to buy the CFL bulbs, they were giving big discounts at the stores, but charging everyone a buck or two a month so even if I didn’t buy any at the time I was still paying for them.
Exactly. This kind of panic shows up in every story about a far-reaching Big Brother government. But they’re so easy to foil that I really have a hard time enjoying any of those books/movies because its obvious the author/director put no thought into at all.
When you track everybody (but still want to single out individuals) the information is worthless.
the goal is not to find who is who. The goal is to detect an unusual event, and then go investigate. Knock knock. Papers please. We have reason to believe that you have failed to register a visitor, so please step aside while we will do a brief search. If in fact no traces of any visitors found, sorry about that, sir. Next time try to shower on schedule if you don’t want some friendly attention from the State.
I see that many counter arguments here boil down to a false dichotomy, that either we have a nice, well-intentioned government we are supposed to have or else we have soldiers rounding up everybody for internment. I.e. as long as the government is not doing things evil governments are “supposed” to do, that we should believe they are not evil. Except, who are we to say what the evil government “wants” to do or is “supposed” to do? Just because we don’t fully understand the logic behind the evil we are dealing with doesn’t mean that it is so apparently “irrational” that we should not believe in its existence, evidence to the contrary.
Well, if you’re really worried about this invasion of your privacy, then you should probably shred your credit cards, cancel your cable and internet, and smash your cell phone with a rock. Each of those presents an equal or greater opportunity for the unscrupulous to invade your privacy. Oh yeah, don’t forget to install the blackout curtains.
Electricity usage is pretty anonymous and noisy and the meters don’t, as far as I understand it, collect data in real time. They probably report in something like 1 hour increments. So it’s not going to be particularly easy to distinguish between the somewhat paranoid “Hey, two people took showers” and the “hey, someone took a long shower and then started the dishwasher.” Mostly the kind of data you’re going to get is “Hey, it was really hot and the air conditioner ran all day.” which is exactly what the smart meters are intended to record.
should I jump off the cliff while I am at it? Who told you that I am “worried” about “this invasion of your privacy”? I am explaining why this is in fact an invasion of privacy, one amongst many others. Other invasions are much more significant, or have potential to become much more significant in the future. But we are talking about smart meters in this thread.
Tracking water usage should give a pretty good idea of how many people are in the apartment, unless these people are consciously taking measures to avoid detection. So people trying to avoid State attention get to have all sorts of headache, while the State itself can just run computer programs to detect anomalies in the data being collected for other purposes (smart grid and stuff) i.e. essentially for free. You don’t need an expensive team of analysts under Mount Weather to track every household or something, local utility’s computers will do the data mining in their spare time.
Well, it’s your suggestion, not mine. But it’s not one that I find unappealing.
Yes…and driving by the house and counting the number of cars in the driveway would also give you a pretty good idea, and more reliably as well. This bugaboo of determining how many people are in a dwelling is only relevant in a society that has already degenerated in its personal freedoms so far that guests have to be registered. In reality, the knowledge that someone might possibly have a houseguest (or might just like really long showers) isn’t very useful in a society where people are free to have guests, one-night stands, or roommates.
The thing you’re not getting here is that with current technology, if some first world government wanted to monitor their population that closely, they’re not going to fool around with water and electric meters – they’re going to inject you with RFID chips, surround your houses with cameras with night vision and embed microscopic CCD cameras in your lighting fixtures. They’re going to have cameras at every intersection to record your license plate. They may even strap GPS transceivers on everyone. The nice thing is that mining and analyzing all this data will make for lots of jobs.
BTW, in the YouTube video that the OP referenced, the primary abuse of smart meters was to identify illegal pot farms and businesses being run in residential areas. You don’t need smart meters to do that – you just have to subpoena the power company and look for unexpectedly high power readings over a several month period. Whether that’s an abuse of privacy or not, I don’t know, but all the high tech does is reduces the granularity of reporting.
Are the factual claims even worth listening to in this video? The smart meters self-organise into a network across which your data can leapfrog back to the utility company? It’s technically possible, but do they?
The whole thing has the same feel as the misplaced paranoia sometimes directed at items with embedded RFID - people jump to the conclusion they’re being tracked by satellite, when that’s not only not happening, but not even possible using that particular tech.
I repeat, the second you start tracking everybody, the idea of patterns is thrown out the window. Especially when people know they’re being tracked and being able to fuck with the tracker is both a) trivially easy and b) completely innocent in the eyes of the law.
