Subject: Smart grid could turn appliances into spies, experts warn
(The good news is that we live off the grid. All our appliances can do is talk to themselves)
Curious Carl
ELECTRICITY
Power vs. privacy
Smart grid could turn appliances into spies, experts warn
Thursday, February 18, 2010
By Paul Gallant, special to CBC News
Do you want your fridge talking about you behind your back?
With the rapid adoption of a North American "smart grid" aimed at helping
consumers conserve electricity, it's also possible that smart appliances
will be able to transmit information about their activities (and yours)
through the power lines. Your electricity utility may not yet be able to
determine when you snack, do laundry or shower, but privacy advocates are
sounding the alarm that systems need to be put in place to guard details
about a household's electricity usage from prying eyes.
A paper released last November by the Office of the Information and Privacy
Commissioner of Ontario and the U.S.-based Future of Privacy Forum proposes
building privacy controls right into the smart grid before the system is
fully rolled out.
'The Smart Grid will enable third parties to peer into your home. You can
imagine how tempting the marketing opportunities will be.
- Ontario Privacy Commissioner Ann CavoukianAlthough different utilities
define the smart grid in different ways, the key feature is a two-way
communication system between a household's meter and the electricity utility
so that energy consumption can be tracked with incredible - sometimes even
minute-by-minute - detail.
"The Smart Grid will enable third parties to peer into your home," says
commissioner Ann Cavoukian. "You can imagine how tempting the marketing
opportunities will be."
So-called smart meters are the first step in creating a smart grid. In
Canada, Ontario has been first off the mark. The province has already
installed 1.1 million smart meters and plans to have one in every household
by the end of 2010. In the U.S., Boulder, Colo., has taken the lead to
become the first city with smart meters for every customer.
"Our expectation is that this network will be 100 or 1,000 times larger than
the internet," Marie Hattar, vice-president of marketing at U.S.-based Cisco
Network Systems Solutions, said when the company announced last year that it
intended to make communication equipment for the smart grid. "If you think
about it, some homes have internet access, but some don't. Everyone has
electricity access - all of those homes could potentially be connected."
How it works
In its most basic form, the smart grid allows utilities to read meters
without sending out an employee; instead the meters send a reading back to
the utility automatically. But Ontario's push into smart meters has been
aimed at changing consumer behaviour, so the launch in that province goes
further.
"The Ontario government wanted to get price transparency into the hands of
the consumers," says Rick Stevens, director of distribution development at
Ontario's Hydro One. "So we're building all the back-office systems to allow
customers to get better price transparency through time-of-use rates, which
is something we'll be rolling out in the next few months."
Many households with smart meters can already go online and log in to an
energy-use account to see how much energy they used during a specific time
period. By giving people more detailed information about their electricity
usage, the assumption is that they will be willing to reduce their
consumption or re-schedule it to off-peak hours when the rate may be
cheaper.
Privacy concerns
Things get trickier from a privacy perspective if the system offers
real-time statistics, since electricity use is a good indication of whether
someone is at home at that very moment and what they are doing - if they're
awake or asleep, for example.
Eventually, utilities will have the ability to allow consumers to see how
their energy use compares to that of their neighbours, information that, if
not sufficiently protected, could reveal many things about your neighbours'
comings and goings as well.
Utilities promise this data will be encrypted and assigned an anonymous
number that can't be tracked back to an individual customer. But the cyber
security co-ordination task group that has been addressing smart grid
privacy concerns in the U.S. has warned, "there is a lack of formal privacy
policies, standards, or procedures by entities who are involved in the smart
grid and collect information."
It added that, "comprehensive and consistent definitions of personally
identifiable information do not generally exist in the utility industry."
Stevens, who has been in touch with Cavoukian and has read the smart grid
report, says Hydro One has both hardware and software safeguards in place to
preserve customer privacy.
"Hydro One's approach is to build security requirements right up front and
put them into our tender documents so that safeguards are integrated as part
of the overall design," says Stevens. "Privacy by design is what we live and
breathe."
Smart appliances
Hydro One has policies in place that prohibit it from selling customer
information to third parties. But the pressure for third-parties to access
power-usage information will only increase.
Many companies are working on new products - electric vehicles, smart
appliances and energy-production systems like solar panels - that have the
potential to take advantage of the smart grid's two-way communication system
to send usage information from individual appliances and devices to a
central office where it can be accessed by the utility or by the user.
Whirlpool Corp., for example, announced in January it would produce one
million smart appliances by the end of 2011 and make all its appliances
smart grid-compatible by the end of 2015.
Device-specific information would be useful to the consumer to get credit,
for example, if they were feeding electricity back into the grid from solar
panels or a windmill. Some appliances could adjust their own energy
consumption according to the time of day or by monitoring what other
appliances were running in the home.
This kind of information could help make a home more efficient in terms of
energy consumption, but it would also be tempting information for marketers,
governments and even thieves. The Future of Privacy report suggests that
extensive information could be gleaned from the grid - everything from when
you shower or watch TV to which appliances and gadgets you have in your
home, and when you use them.
The report urges that any third-party access to the information should not
be a deal between the utilities and the third parties, but between the
consumers and the third parties. As well, third parties should agree not to
correlate data with data obtained from other sources or the individual,
without the consent of the individual.
"There always needs be a policy to provide levels of protection, or at least
transparency, about how the data will be used," says Christopher Wolf of the
Future of Privacy Forum. "It's not the technology that's bad, it's the use
of the technology."
Stevens says it's hard to predict how smart appliances and vehicles will
interact with the grid. For example, in the future you may be able to plug
your electric vehicle into a friend's meter and, by keying in your code,
have it billed to your account. This system could make it easier for a
person's whereabouts to be tracked, but right now it's just an idea.
"It's not that we're not thinking about it - it's just that we don't build
cars, so we have to watch the car makers to see where they're going," says
Stevens. "We can't start building functionality because we don't know the
requirements at this point."
Ontario privacy commissioner Cavoukian has been calling for companies,
governments and other agencies to build their information systems with
privacy as the default mode. "If privacy is to live well into the future, we
can no longer rely on regulatory compliance. Smart privacy is about having a
whole arsenal of protections. That includes having regulations, but they're
not going to be enough for the future."
++++
Power vs. privacy
Smart grid could turn appliances into spies, experts warn
Thursday, February 18, 2010
By Paul Gallant, special to CBC News
Do you want your fridge talking about you behind your back?
With the rapid adoption of a North American "smart grid" aimed at helping
consumers conserve electricity, it's also possible that smart appliances
will be able to transmit information about their activities (and yours)
through the power lines. Your electricity utility may not yet be able to
determine when you snack, do laundry or shower, but privacy advocates are
sounding the alarm that systems need to be put in place to guard details
about a household's electricity usage from prying eyes.
A paper released last November by the Office of the Information and Privacy
Commissioner of Ontario and the U.S.-based Future of Privacy Forum proposes
building privacy controls right into the smart grid before the system is
fully rolled out.
'The Smart Grid will enable third parties to peer into your home. You can
imagine how tempting the marketing opportunities will be.
- Ontario Privacy Commissioner Ann CavoukianAlthough different utilities
define the smart grid in different ways, the key feature is a two-way
communication system between a household's meter and the electricity utility
so that energy consumption can be tracked with incredible - sometimes even
minute-by-minute - detail.
"The Smart Grid will enable third parties to peer into your home," says
commissioner Ann Cavoukian. "You can imagine how tempting the marketing
opportunities will be."
So-called smart meters are the first step in creating a smart grid. In
Canada, Ontario has been first off the mark. The province has already
installed 1.1 million smart meters and plans to have one in every household
by the end of 2010. In the U.S., Boulder, Colo., has taken the lead to
become the first city with smart meters for every customer.
"Our expectation is that this network will be 100 or 1,000 times larger than
the internet," Marie Hattar, vice-president of marketing at U.S.-based Cisco
Network Systems Solutions, said when the company announced last year that it
intended to make communication equipment for the smart grid. "If you think
about it, some homes have internet access, but some don't. Everyone has
electricity access - all of those homes could potentially be connected."
How it works
In its most basic form, the smart grid allows utilities to read meters
without sending out an employee; instead the meters send a reading back to
the utility automatically. But Ontario's push into smart meters has been
aimed at changing consumer behaviour, so the launch in that province goes
further.
"The Ontario government wanted to get price transparency into the hands of
the consumers," says Rick Stevens, director of distribution development at
Ontario's Hydro One. "So we're building all the back-office systems to allow
customers to get better price transparency through time-of-use rates, which
is something we'll be rolling out in the next few months."
Many households with smart meters can already go online and log in to an
energy-use account to see how much energy they used during a specific time
period. By giving people more detailed information about their electricity
usage, the assumption is that they will be willing to reduce their
consumption or re-schedule it to off-peak hours when the rate may be
cheaper.
Privacy concerns
Things get trickier from a privacy perspective if the system offers
real-time statistics, since electricity use is a good indication of whether
someone is at home at that very moment and what they are doing - if they're
awake or asleep, for example.
Eventually, utilities will have the ability to allow consumers to see how
their energy use compares to that of their neighbours, information that, if
not sufficiently protected, could reveal many things about your neighbours'
comings and goings as well.
Utilities promise this data will be encrypted and assigned an anonymous
number that can't be tracked back to an individual customer. But the cyber
security co-ordination task group that has been addressing smart grid
privacy concerns in the U.S. has warned, "there is a lack of formal privacy
policies, standards, or procedures by entities who are involved in the smart
grid and collect information."
It added that, "comprehensive and consistent definitions of personally
identifiable information do not generally exist in the utility industry."
Stevens, who has been in touch with Cavoukian and has read the smart grid
report, says Hydro One has both hardware and software safeguards in place to
preserve customer privacy.
"Hydro One's approach is to build security requirements right up front and
put them into our tender documents so that safeguards are integrated as part
of the overall design," says Stevens. "Privacy by design is what we live and
breathe."
Smart appliances
Hydro One has policies in place that prohibit it from selling customer
information to third parties. But the pressure for third-parties to access
power-usage information will only increase.
Many companies are working on new products - electric vehicles, smart
appliances and energy-production systems like solar panels - that have the
potential to take advantage of the smart grid's two-way communication system
to send usage information from individual appliances and devices to a
central office where it can be accessed by the utility or by the user.
Whirlpool Corp., for example, announced in January it would produce one
million smart appliances by the end of 2011 and make all its appliances
smart grid-compatible by the end of 2015.
Device-specific information would be useful to the consumer to get credit,
for example, if they were feeding electricity back into the grid from solar
panels or a windmill. Some appliances could adjust their own energy
consumption according to the time of day or by monitoring what other
appliances were running in the home.
This kind of information could help make a home more efficient in terms of
energy consumption, but it would also be tempting information for marketers,
governments and even thieves. The Future of Privacy report suggests that
extensive information could be gleaned from the grid - everything from when
you shower or watch TV to which appliances and gadgets you have in your
home, and when you use them.
The report urges that any third-party access to the information should not
be a deal between the utilities and the third parties, but between the
consumers and the third parties. As well, third parties should agree not to
correlate data with data obtained from other sources or the individual,
without the consent of the individual.
"There always needs be a policy to provide levels of protection, or at least
transparency, about how the data will be used," says Christopher Wolf of the
Future of Privacy Forum. "It's not the technology that's bad, it's the use
of the technology."
Stevens says it's hard to predict how smart appliances and vehicles will
interact with the grid. For example, in the future you may be able to plug
your electric vehicle into a friend's meter and, by keying in your code,
have it billed to your account. This system could make it easier for a
person's whereabouts to be tracked, but right now it's just an idea.
"It's not that we're not thinking about it - it's just that we don't build
cars, so we have to watch the car makers to see where they're going," says
Stevens. "We can't start building functionality because we don't know the
requirements at this point."
Ontario privacy commissioner Cavoukian has been calling for companies,
governments and other agencies to build their information systems with
privacy as the default mode. "If privacy is to live well into the future, we
can no longer rely on regulatory compliance. Smart privacy is about having a
whole arsenal of protections. That includes having regulations, but they're
not going to be enough for the future."
++++
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