
Web thinkers are not confused by shiny new things « Jon Udell - jancona
http://blog.jonudell.net/2011/02/27/web-thinkers-are-not-confused-by-shiny-new-things/
======
zdw
Eventually you have to trust the electric company will guard (or discard) your
data - they need to get the data in some form anyway. While it might be nice
to scrub the data before giving it to them, that may not be practical, as this
service passes data both ways (the grid can signal appliances to not run when
under heavy load, for example).

In terms of trust, this isn't any different from having to trust that your web
service provider will protect your data. Granted, there is a substantial
difference in choice - you likely only have one option for electrical service
to a home, but a plethora of web hosting choices. Thus, this is fundamentally
a regulatory issue (ie. call the Corporation Commission).

The alternative is to do it yourself (run your own server, make your own
electricity with solar/wind/etc.), which, if you're really concerned about
this, you might feel it's worth doing.

~~~
jancona
Ideally, you wouldn't have to trust them, you would be able to contract with
them. Or rather, if you owned the data, they would have to contract with you
to use it.

I agree that given the current environment, it would require regulatory
changes to implement the data ownership concept. And given the degree of
regulatory capture in such markets, good luck getting such a change
implemented.

~~~
_delirium
It's looking likely that the EU will issue some sort of regulation on power-
meter data, though I agree the likelihood of that happening in the US is
fairly low. Here's an interim report by one of the EU's working groups:
[http://ec.europa.eu/energy/gas_electricity/smartgrids/doc/ex...](http://ec.europa.eu/energy/gas_electricity/smartgrids/doc/expert_group2.pdf)

The main things that seem likely are: 1) consumers will be guaranteed some
sort of free access to their own usage data, partly in hopes that increased
information about one's power usage will encourage people to use less; 2)
there will be some sort of restriction on how personally identifiable, non-
aggregate data can be used, e.g. the power company won't be allowed to infer
things about your lifestyle based on power usage patterns, and then sell that
data to advertisers.

Tricky areas are what counts as "aggregate" data (there are a lot of potential
pitfalls there, both intentional exploitation of loopholes, and accidental
leakage of identifiable data into aggregate data), and if there should be some
sort of distinction between internal-to-operations and external data mining.
For example, perhaps it would be okay for power companies to infer more
specific things about individual lifestyles, _if_ that information is only
being used to optimize the power grid.

------
T_S_
The author suggests we will have mechanisms that allow us to "own" data from
smart meters. Never mind that the electric companies will think that they own
the data.

The reality is ownership is a concept that really only works for scarce things
like physical goods and services. Ultimately, you can't own information, you
can only have it or not. To control information is to either make it scarce
(like music and movies with copyright and DRM) or to control the actions of
the party receiving it with licenses and contracts. Now who is going to win
that battle? If you think consumers will, then you have to implement a
mechanism to track actions taken on the basis of any information supplied by
consumers. Pretty complicated, and consumers will have to feel threatened in
order to pay for such things. Either that or ham-handed regulation gets
imposed after some horrible information mishap.

------
jancona
Of course, someone could watch my house now and see when I turn on my lights.
Better yet, they could see me stumble in when the bars close at 2 am. The
issue isn't that private information is being made public, it's that the cost
of gathering and aggregating public information is being drastically reduced.

Without smart meters, it might cost someone hundreds or thousands of dollars
to hire a private detective to discover my drinking habits. My estranged
spouse might be willing to spend that money in a custody case, but my life
insurer wouldn't find it to be cost-effective. With new sources of low-cost
data like that from smart meters, the calculation might be different.

(edit: corrected a couple of typos)

~~~
true_religion
I think the ubiquity of low-cost data from computers is going to return us to
a "small town" mentality. In a small town, all your idiosyncrasies are public
gossip. Everyone knows that you're a drunk from your doctor to your ex to your
boss.

Is this good or bad? Well, the same fundamental mechanisms that allow life
insurers to spy upon you, allows you to find out if a multi-national is
abusing your trust and say... funding an island dictatorship in exchange for
water-rights.

