New 'Smart' Electrical Meters Raise Privacy Issues
New ‘Smart’ Electrical Meters Raise Privacy Issues
Agence France Presse
By Daniel Silva
Friday, November 6, 2009
MADRID (AFP) – The new “smart meters” utilities are installing in homes around the world to reduce energy use raise fresh privacy issues because of the wealth of information about consumer habits they reveal, experts said Friday.
The devices send data on household energy consumption directly to utilities on a regular basis, allowing the firms to manage demand more efficiently and advise households when it is cheaper to turn on appliances.
But privacy experts gathered in Madrid for a three-day conference which wraps up Friday warned that the meters can also reveal intimate details about customers’ habits such as when they eat, what time they go to sleep or how much television they watch.
Christopher Wolf quoted:
“The collection and storage and retention of the data makes it vulnerable to security breaches as well as to government access,” Christopher Wolf, the co-chairman and founder of the Washington-based Future of Privacy Forum, told AFP.
“It is really an issue of how much information about us can be collected by a third party, how much do they really need, how long do they need to keep it, what should the rules be on retention and when should destruction of it occur.”
Today, Jules is in Madrid presenting at the 31st International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners on online age verification. Protecting the privacy and safety of children and ensuring they do not access inappropriate content or environments continues to be a priority for parents. Service providers, educators, governments and others are working to ensure that children can obtain the benefits of technology while being shielded from the excesses. What are the current techniques being used to establish the age of Internet users and are they effective? What are the emerging techniques that may be available in the future? What are the adverse consequences or the new opportunities provided by new technologies? And how can we ensure that our efforts are relevant to the lives of this first generation of digital natives? The presentation and report provide an overview of the privacy issues of age verification.
Click below to view the presentation and report. Let us know if you have any thoughts.
How Privacy (Or Lack of It) Could Sabatoge the Grid
How Privacy (Or Lack of It) Could Sabatoge the Grid
SmartGridNews.com
By Jules Polonetsky and Christopher Wolf
In October, President Obama announced $3.4 billion in federal grants to help build our nation’s Smart Grid. The President said that the technology that will make up the Smart Grid will make the nation’s power transmission system more efficient, encourage renewable energy sources and give consumers better control over their electricity usage and costs.
The potential benefits are clear. Far less obvious to many is that the smart power grid is also a smart information grid, a system that Cisco’s CEO has predicted will be bigger than the Internet. But while Internet privacy issues are limited to the Web activities of users, the Smart Grid will involve the collection of information about what goes on at people’s homes. As Commerce Secretary Gary Locke stated this September, “The major benefit provided by the Smart Grid… is also its Achilles’ heel from a privacy viewpoint.”
Privacy and the Smart Grid: New Frontiers, New Challenges
Today, Jules is in Madrid presenting at “Privacy by Design: The Definitive Workshop” on privacy issues and the Smart Grid. While upgrading our power system by introducing two-way data flows could lead to a cleaner environment, reduced power costs, and more reliable utility service, there are data privacy issues that must be addressed if consumers are going to accept these new “smart” technologies. Pressing for early attention to Privacy by Design could ensure a future of smart power and smart privacy. The presentation provides an overview of the electricity grid, specific privacy concerns at each component of the grid, and Smart Grid construction underway across the world.
Click below to view the presentation. Let us know if you have any thoughts.
