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.”
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