Except is that information public? That information actually has an extremely legitimate use, which is to better manage peak grid usage and how to optimize that.
I don't think it needs to be easily accessible to the public to be problematic. Many people, including businesses and government, can have access. The electricity vendor has little incentive to protect it, to scrutinize government requests, etc. Recent NY Times articles describe the US Postal Service accepting almost all law enforcement requests for information on their customers.
Also, data has a way of leaking ...
> That information actually has an extremely legitimate use, which is to better manage peak grid usage and how to optimize that.
I do see a benefit to it, but 1) It should be anonymized and minimized. For example, how about aggregating data about usage on my block and storing that? Cleaning it of anything that violates privacy, such as high-resolution individual signals? 2) My privacy is a higher priority than their technical benefits; there's an assumption (maybe not by you) that whenever there's a tradeoff, privacy doesn't amount to much -- this is money we're talking about, after all.
