“What is your privacy worth to you?” Although many readers might view such a question as being somewhat abstract, or even metaphysical, in nature, for those citizens who have been linked to the Smart Grid it is a question of cold, hard cash.

“But what,” you ask, “is the Smart Grid?” Bob Sullivan at the Red Tape Chronicles offers the following helpful summary of the Smart Grid in action:

Would you sign up for a discount with your power company in exchange for surrendering control of your thermostat?  What if it means that, one day, your auto insurance company will know that you regularly arrive home on weekends at 2:15 a.m., just after the bars close?

Welcome to the complex world of the Smart Grid, which may very well pit environmental concerns against thorny privacy issues.  If you think such debates are purely philosophical, you’re behind the times.

Maryland residents this month received fliers offering annual discounts of up to $100 in exchange for allowing their power company, Pepco, to occasionally shut off their air conditioning units during hot days, when demand is high. Pepco says consumers will hardly notice the change, and the two-way communication between utility and appliances will go a long way toward preventing brownouts.

Pepco’s discount plan is among the first signs that the futuristic “Smart Grid” has already arrived. Up to three-fourths of the homes in the United States are expected to be placed on the “Smart Grid” in the next decade, collecting and storing data on the habits of their residents by the petabyte. And while there’s no reason to believe Pepco or other utilities will share the data with outside firms, some experts are already asking the question: Will saving the planet mean inviting Big Brother into the home? Or at least, as Commerce Secretary Gary Locke recently warned, will privacy concerns be the “Achilles’ heel” of the Smart Grid?

The Smart Grid is only the latest step in a long process.

At first, it was simply annoying. For example, an individual might subscribe to a magazine, and suddenly would receive solicitations to subscribe to three others. Or perhaps he would give money to one political cause, only to find his mailbox stuffed with plaintive appeals from a score of other ‘worthy causes.’

Then came the day when people began to deliberately inflict this sort of thing on themselves. At the grocery store, the bookstore, or office supply outlet, do you have a ‘membership’ or ‘rewards’ card, promising special discounts or rebates for using the card every time you shop? There is a contract implicit in the use of such cards: you permit the company to track your purchases — and thus predict, or shape, your future expenditures — in exchange for a small monetary reward. As long as the purchaser understands what is being done with the information, and consents to its use in exchange for a reward which he believes is commensurate to the personal information which he is surrendering in the process, clearly a reasonable contractual relationship exists.

Of course, a number of vital questions still remain: What does the company do with the information? Are they keeping it private, or is it being sold or traded with other companies? Many of the ‘rewards’ and ‘membership’ programs promise privacy, the reality of life in an age of hacking and sophisticated data mining, it can be very difficult for a citizen to have any confidence that their information will remain even ‘semi-private.’

The widespread use of radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags has also attracted attention because of substantive privacy concerns. When personal items have a RFID tag embedded, an RFID skimmer allows someone to learn a very great deal about you. In fact, with skimmers now taken for granted in many commercial locations, many citizens could be leaving a digital ‘trail’ of their daily activities without even knowing it.

Now the Smart Grid is taking us to the next ‘level.’ As Sullivan observes,

Utility companies, by gathering hundreds of billions of data points about us, could reconstruct much of our daily lives -- when we wake up, when we go home, when we go on vacation, perhaps even when we draw a hot bath. They might sell this information to marketing companies -- perhaps a travel agency will send brochures right when the family vacation is about to arrive.  Law enforcement officials might use this information against us ("Where were you last night? Home watching TV? That's not what the power company says … ”).  Divorce lawyers could subpoena the data ("You say you're a good parent, but your children are forced to sleep in 61-degree rooms. For shame ..."). A credit bureau or insurance company could penalize you because your energy use patterns are similar to those of other troublesome consumers. Or criminals could spy the data, then plan home burglaries with fine-tuned accuracy.

One need not be too ‘conspiratorially minded’ to see that this sort of information is just begging for abuse. When combined with information from other sources, such as those outlined above, the ability to track, predict, and influence individuals continues to expand.

For some people, the knee-jerk reply is to dismiss the whole issue: “I don’t have anything to hide. I haven’t done anything wrong.” But that is not the point. If you are worried about “identity theft” or even something as basic as someone stealing your credit number, then why would you ever want to give someone the ability to reconstruct your life or predict your actions — what you eat, what you wear, what you read, what you watch, where you travel and when, etc.?

For now, many of these actions which trade privacy for convenience remain optional; paying good ol’ cash and avoiding discount cards and rewards programs can go along way to keeping your life ‘off the grid.’

Increasingly, however, participation is becoming less and less ‘optional.’ Byte by byte, we are in danger of privacy slipping away.

Rt. Rev. James Heiser has served as Pastor of Salem Lutheran Church in Malone, Texas, while maintaining his responsibilities as publisher of Repristination Press, which he established in 1993 to publish academic and popular theological books to serve the Lutheran Church.  Heiser has also served since 2005 as the Dean of Missions for The Augustana Ministerium and in 2006 was called to serve as Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Diocese of North America (ELDoNA). An advocate of manned space exploration, Heiser serves on the Steering Committee of the Mars Society. His publications include two books; The Office of the Ministry in N. Hunnius' Epitome Credendorum (1996) and A Shining City on a Higher Hill: Christianity and the Next New World (2006), as well as dozens of journal articles and book reviews.

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (3)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Show/Hide comments

DDW

October 22, 2009

173.74.213.85

Votes: +5

• 
• 
• 

I'm a techincally inclined person since the days of my boyhood

And way back in the early '70s I spoke with friends about how the 110vac coming from your wall outlet would someday be able to control things in your house. My friends mocked me; "Impossible" they said. It looks as if I'm now being vidicated. Those who would rule will stop at NOTHING to gain control and enslave us.
And those who think it's o.k. to have their lives looked over because they've done "nothing wrong" allow me to state that in a tyranny (which it would seem that these United States is becoming with ever increasing speed) EVERYONE can be found guilty of SOMETHING.

Pat Henry

October 22, 2009

70.182.76.180

Votes: +4

• 
• 
• 

market competition is the solution to privacy issues

It is becoming apparent that there is no stopping the collection and sharing of information. And while government should be limited in this sphere (as in all spheres) by law, we certainly do not want to GROW government by having them pass laws against all kinds of data sharing. The market will have to decide. To say, comsumers will have to choose companies that protect privacy over those that do not.

Of course, that demands de-regulating markets. So we see, in a new level, how important it is to restrain government (by electing principled Constitutionalists and Libertarians at all levels) and likewise to get government regulation (which is unConstitutional) out of free markets. There is no other way. And it must be done now.

bigfoot62

October 28, 2009

99.53.162.123

Votes: +1

• 
• 
• 

I'm sorry

But, I do not yet see the danger in this program. Your privacy scenarios are several big steps from the smart grid being in widespread use. I would be more concerned about the cost of the system and how much of it will be passed on the the consumer. Also the fact that it will be subsidized is curious and leads one to believe that the program may not be self sustaining unless the power companies did in fact sell our data to marketing companies in the future. I can't see the government intruding that much in our lives when we are paying for it. Now if there was some free socialized electric then I could see all the privacy issues you raise coming to light easily.

Write comment

This content has been locked. You can no longer post any comment.