4 ms·

> People turn out to irrationally not want smart meters. Some people may be irrational, but smart meters are a huge privacy concern - the electricity company c

> People turn out to irrationally not want smart meters. Some people may be irrational, but smart meters are a huge privacy concern - the electricity company can figure out your patterns from the power usage and the "shape" of it. This is the reason why I don't want a smart meter. Disclaimer: I actually was involved in building firmware and management software of smart meters.

jeffgreco 5y ago
Usage patterns seem extremely important for building out a renewable power grid. Meanwhile, what is the privacy concern with the “shape” of your usage?
- somethingwitty1 5y ago
  At my house, I have a meter that I get a feed from. So I look at the graphs. From the graphs, you can learn about what is happening in the house. You know when someone is showering, left home for work (arrived home), doing laundry, went to bed/got up, used the microwave and so on. Some of that you could determine by watching the house, but that requires constant surveillance. A smart meter provides all this data with no effort and at mass scale. If I can glean that level of information just by glancing at the graphs, I'm sure someone better equipped could determine even finer grain details of what is going on in the house.
- elliekelly 5y ago
  A change in your usage pattern could be used to ID any number of private things that could then be used against you: - When you’ve gone on vacation and your home is unattended. - When you have an additional tenant, a long-term houseguest, have a new significant other or even have a baby. - Whether or not you’re actually working when you’re working from home. - Homes that use greater than X amount of electricity are at greater risk of Y and so your home owners/rental/car insurance premium goes up. - People who play computer/video games late at night are at higher risk for health issues is your health insurance premium goes up. And I bet there are other, much more subtle things they could figure out once given the opportunity to vacuum up your data: like estimate what temperature you set your AC to and determine whether or not someone in the house was awake at any given moment of any given day.
  - aaron-santos 5y ago
    These are all really good reasons to be against mobile device tracking and electronic telemetry too.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
    I am not sure why I ( or you for that matter ) am forced to defend my stance on privacy by listing things I want to stay private. The objection is that I do not want to have my every move monitored with ever-increasing accuracy. This seems to be an annoying issue. Any serious proponent of privacy is already taking steps to hold on its vestiges, which include not taking a public stance on it.
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  Usage patterns at the substation level are important. They don't need household detail.
- varispeed 5y ago
  I am disabled and I was considering growing my own medicine in the event of losing job or not having funds for filling my prescription any more - hopefully that will never happen, but knowing that I have a smart meter, that would add a lot of anxiety that I don't need.
seemaze 5y ago
Not only the electric company, anyone with a hint of ambition. I can read my own meter, along with 60 of my closest neighbors if I so chose (I don't) because every meter emits unencrypted packets several times for each reporting interval (5 minutes in my case)
idiotsecant 5y ago
If the electric company sends someone out to read your meter every day is that objectionable? Every hour? Every minute? At what resolution is energy usage too invasive? Why?
supernova87a 5y ago
How do you defend against the argument that it's just a matter of degree? I can tell from your old spinning mechanical meter that you're at home and not on vacation. That's personal information. Why is a smart meter so different?
- elliekelly 5y ago
  One is connected to the internet and sends data every second of the day (hopefully only to authorized recipients) while the other provides only one monthly datapoint and is quite a pain for bad actors, or anyone really, to collect. It’s like the difference between showing someone you have $X in your checking account vs showing someone all of the transactions you’ve conducted in the account over the last month. One is far more invasive because it’s a window into your daily habits.
- rurp 5y ago
  Why would you assume that increasing the effect of something by orders of magnitude is harmless? Chugging 1 glass of water is great, but 100 will kill you; the only difference is a matter of degree. A spinning meter can be manually checked to find out if someone is on vacation, but doing that is slow and isn't very worthwhile for criminals. Being able to monitor 100,000 meters at once for empty homes might suddenly be very economical for criminals.
- QasimK 5y ago
  You cannot tell from your old meter because it does not submit meter readings every minute (or whatever the configuration is) because it does not have an internet connection.

jeffgreco 5y ago

Usage patterns seem extremely important for building out a renewable power grid. Meanwhile, what is the privacy concern with the “shape” of your usage?

somethingwitty1 5y ago
At my house, I have a meter that I get a feed from. So I look at the graphs. From the graphs, you can learn about what is happening in the house. You know when someone is showering, left home for work (arrived home), doing laundry, went to bed/got up, used the microwave and so on. Some of that you could determine by watching the house, but that requires constant surveillance. A smart meter provides all this data with no effort and at mass scale. If I can glean that level of information just by glancing at the graphs, I'm sure someone better equipped could determine even finer grain details of what is going on in the house.
elliekelly 5y ago
A change in your usage pattern could be used to ID any number of private things that could then be used against you: - When you’ve gone on vacation and your home is unattended. - When you have an additional tenant, a long-term houseguest, have a new significant other or even have a baby. - Whether or not you’re actually working when you’re working from home. - Homes that use greater than X amount of electricity are at greater risk of Y and so your home owners/rental/car insurance premium goes up. - People who play computer/video games late at night are at higher risk for health issues is your health insurance premium goes up. And I bet there are other, much more subtle things they could figure out once given the opportunity to vacuum up your data: like estimate what temperature you set your AC to and determine whether or not someone in the house was awake at any given moment of any given day.
- aaron-santos 5y ago
  These are all really good reasons to be against mobile device tracking and electronic telemetry too.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
  I am not sure why I ( or you for that matter ) am forced to defend my stance on privacy by listing things I want to stay private. The objection is that I do not want to have my every move monitored with ever-increasing accuracy. This seems to be an annoying issue. Any serious proponent of privacy is already taking steps to hold on its vestiges, which include not taking a public stance on it.
Dylan16807 5y ago
Usage patterns at the substation level are important. They don't need household detail.
varispeed 5y ago
I am disabled and I was considering growing my own medicine in the event of losing job or not having funds for filling my prescription any more - hopefully that will never happen, but knowing that I have a smart meter, that would add a lot of anxiety that I don't need.

seemaze 5y ago

Not only the electric company, anyone with a hint of ambition. I can read my own meter, along with 60 of my closest neighbors if I so chose (I don't) because every meter emits unencrypted packets several times for each reporting interval (5 minutes in my case)

idiotsecant 5y ago

If the electric company sends someone out to read your meter every day is that objectionable? Every hour? Every minute? At what resolution is energy usage too invasive? Why?

supernova87a 5y ago

How do you defend against the argument that it's just a matter of degree? I can tell from your old spinning mechanical meter that you're at home and not on vacation. That's personal information. Why is a smart meter so different?

elliekelly 5y ago
One is connected to the internet and sends data every second of the day (hopefully only to authorized recipients) while the other provides only one monthly datapoint and is quite a pain for bad actors, or anyone really, to collect. It’s like the difference between showing someone you have $X in your checking account vs showing someone all of the transactions you’ve conducted in the account over the last month. One is far more invasive because it’s a window into your daily habits.
rurp 5y ago
Why would you assume that increasing the effect of something by orders of magnitude is harmless? Chugging 1 glass of water is great, but 100 will kill you; the only difference is a matter of degree. A spinning meter can be manually checked to find out if someone is on vacation, but doing that is slow and isn't very worthwhile for criminals. Being able to monitor 100,000 meters at once for empty homes might suddenly be very economical for criminals.
QasimK 5y ago
You cannot tell from your old meter because it does not submit meter readings every minute (or whatever the configuration is) because it does not have an internet connection.