President Barack Obama’s plan to overhaul U.S. infrastructure includes constructing a nationwide “smart grid” that promises to help address many of our current energy challenges. The smart grid plan offers the hope that it “will save us money, protect our power sources from blackout or attack, and deliver clean, alternative forms of energy to every corner of our nation.” While these are noble societal goals, smart grid technologies and systems as envisioned also raise concerns about individual privacy rights.
Part of what makes the smart grid “smart” is its ability to know a lot about the energy-consuming devices in our homes and to monitor activity for those devices to help determine when power should be used or limited. Such knowledge is useful in regulating power consumption to use energy more efficiently.
In addition to reaching into homes to regulate devices, information about usage and activities could be extracted from homes. Home energy consumption patterns could be gathered and analyzed on a room-by-room and device-by-device basis to determine which devices are used and at what time of day. Although this sort of information may not be considered terribly invasive for some, for others anything that violates the sanctity of “home” may cause tremendous concern.
Those not concerned by the tracking of mere energy usage may become more concerned as devices in our home becoming increasingly “smarter.” One can easily envision a not too distant state of technology convergence where such devices could be used to track more sensitive information. For example, security technology already exists to monitor presence in homes to detect break-ins. Could that same technology be applied in a smart-grid environment to monitor when residents are home? What else will smart appliances “tell” others about households? Will a smart refrigerator be able to determine and disclose the types and quantities of RFID-chipped food products and pharmaceuticals stored on shelves? Who will get this information? Will retailers be able to access this information and use it for marketing and services? Will law enforcement? Concerns such as these are already top of mind for academics and consumer privacy rights advocates as these technologies develop.
via Sustainable Industries | Clean Energy | Privacy Challenges to Smart Grid.
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