Australian Smart Meter Data Shared Far and Wide 172
New submitter ferrisoxide.com writes "In Victoria (Australia), detailed information about electricity customers' power usage, which gives insights into when a house is occupied, is being shared with third parties including mail houses, debt collectors, data processing analysts and government agencies."
Color me surprised. (Score:5, Funny)
Color me surprised. I also expect campaign promises to be kept.
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said the lone remaining tenant of Sealand...
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New Sealand, you probably mean.
Nope. See this. [wikipedia.org]
Re:Color me surprised. (Score:4, Informative)
the Principality of Sealand, I think he means. This is a manmade structure 7nm off the coast of Suffolk which has been privately occupied pretty much since it was abandoned by the British military (it was originally an early warning station and anti-aircraft platform).
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And Lew Zealand [wikia.com] is a boomerang fish thrower!
The moral ... (Score:2)
Victoria's power market is private. (Score:2)
Color me surprised. I also expect campaign promises to be kept.
This isn't the fault of the Victorian government, well not directly.
The Victorian power market was privatised some years ago and it's a private corporation, Origin Energy that is sharing the data with third parties even thought the government is pushing for the new metres in every home. In this regard it was Origin who broke the law by sharing the data. Expect some political finger waggling but not too much as the Victorian government isn't due for another election for a few years.
Power and gas prices
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Imagine your power usage information being shared with a Mailing House!
Kinda cute how you ignored the other parties being furnished this information and went with the most innocuous example.
Shocked (Score:2)
I am absolutely shocked that, despite the assurances from 'smart meter' fanboys, this data has been handed out to all and sundry just as we expected. How
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Info=$$$ It is always been that way, and will always be that way. Anyone knows that, so it is a pretty stupid idea to have yourself monitored that way.
No matter what the fanboys say. Smartmeters are for dumb people (assuming one has a choice).
What is next, smart-tv's, smart browsers, smart shoes that tell where you are walking?
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The story left aside ...
Do you actually know what a smart meter is and what the point is to have one?
Just curious.
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apart from the fact that they use the obsoleted GSM900 bandwidth (channels, even) to build their mesh network via neighbourhood hubs and landlines, that said wireless links are two way, which means that not only is information passed back and forth between meters and hubs, so are instructions (such as kill switch). This presents a problem as anyone with a 934MHz transceiver (rare in the UK since they're now illegal to operate, have been since the block was reallocated to GSM) can simply key on CH1 and poten
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The ones in my area (here in Victoria,Australia) are frequency hopping in the 900MHz unlicensed use band (never has been used for GSM900 here). Jamming one channel won't kill anyones supply. Apparently each meter has an IPv6 based connection as well.
Re:Shocked (Score:5, Informative)
(take it from someone who [still] owns a Cybernet Delta 1): the 934 rigs are notorious bleed boxes. Even with a 1.1 SWR (as close to perfect antenna balance as you'll ever get) you can bleed out over 600kHz each way with a 50W amp. The issue was that the equipment was overpowered and undercooled for what was being asked of it (30 miles on an average day?), the bleed induced by the linear amplifiers cooking themselves very quickly. With anything less than perfect SWR you'll bleed out even further into neighbouring bands.
FWIW, GSM900 was never widely adopted in the UK, distributors instead preferring GSM1800. The 934 crowd never got their bandwidth back to this day.
Thing is, GSM never even touched 934. GSM900 uses 890–915 MHz to send information from the mobile station to the base station (uplink) and 935–960 MHz for the other direction (downlink), providing 124 RF channels (channel numbers 1 to 124) spaced at 200 kHz. Duplex spacing of 45 MHz is used. Guard bands 100 kHz wide are placed at either end of the range of frequencies.
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That's a shit piece of linear amp if it distorts the baseband in and of itself, never mind if it distorts more simply because it got hot. I would really like to see the spectra before-and-after the amp. Is the amp you mention a part of the transmitter?
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no, it's a box the size of a walkman that runs off its own power supply - the string goes rig-amp-SWR meter-antenna in my setup. Without the amp the kit runs 6W and has a range of about 1200 yards. I think the firestick might be a bit duff tho...
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It's kinda hard to fit much in the way of filters for 900MHz in a box that size. I'd have probably done a more controlled design where the incoming band (entire thing) is downconverted, filtered, upconverted and then amplified. The main problem with not-very-selective linear amps is that they can't but make the specs of the original transmitter worse. If the 6W transmitter already is close to hitting leakage limits, then the amp can't help with that without processing the signal, and that can't be done at 6
GSM900 never widely adopted? (Score:2)
FWIW, GSM900 was never widely adopted in the UK, distributors instead preferring GSM1800. The 934 crowd never got their bandwidth back to this day.
That's not right, surely? The first UK GSM licences (Vodafone and Cellnet) were 900, followed some time later by one2one and Orange on 1800. (At university, I could always tell the people on one2one or Orange. They had loads of free minutes, but the networks were sparse and 1800 was more readily attenuated by masonry, so they had to stand outside in January to make phone calls.)
The first GSM phones in the UK were 900-only, too: if you were on an 1800 network, you needed to be sure to buy a dual-band phon
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GSM900 was introduced in 1991, GSM1800 in September 1993 - between those dates the only way to get on the networks was to buy in to stupidly expensive contracts (hell, for that matter there was no such thing as pay-as-you-go back then - that didn't happen until 1996). Otherwise you were stuck on (marginally cheaper) analogue.
BT Cellnet (founded as Cellnet Securicor in 1985) rebranded itself as O2 in 2002, and was acquired by Telefonica Europe in 2005.
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900 to 914 is not an unlicensed band in Australia. The Amateur radio operators still have 915 but the USM band here is 916 to 929. Vodafone will be very unhappy with you if you are using 914 and you will get to talk to the guys at the ACMA about it.
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Are you referring to the Radio Mesh installations or the WiMAX installations? There are two different network infrastructures being deployed in the Victorian Smart Meter rollout, depending on which distributor you are referencing.
Disclaimer - I spent 2 years working on the Smart Meter installation project involved primarily in change management for the network rollout.
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"Do you actually know what a smart meter is and what the point is to have one?"
Sure, after all, I'm smarter than my meter, although I had to switch my indoor 'tomato' growing installation to gas-lights.
Re:Shocked (Score:5, Interesting)
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The vast majority of appliances currently installed do not have the ability to be queried or remotely controlled via the power grind. Most houses are not wired to have remote control at an outlet level.
The Smart Meter project referred to in TFA has the capability to remotely activate or deactivate power at a meter by meter level (generally a single residence or small business), or to consumption limit you at a per meter level (if you exceed 'x' kwh consumtpion, shut off, try again in a few minutes), but to
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So.... You actually believed them? That is slightly naive isn't it? Info=$$$ It is always been that way, and will always be that way. Anyone knows that, so it is a pretty stupid idea to have yourself monitored that way. No matter what the fanboys say. Smartmeters are for dumb people (assuming one has a choice). What is next, smart-tv's, smart browsers, smart shoes that tell where you are walking?
To see these things coming before they actually happen is a great way to be told that your tinfoil hat is too tight.
That's why this kind of understanding (of what should be obvious) is so rarely appreciated. It belongs to a small minority who know their reasoning is sound with no concern for popularity. That's not the way I would have it, but that's the way it is.
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I work for a smart meter company (not these douches in question) and your making it sound like we have this god like power, when there is a lot less data there than you think which can be very easily masked by a number of things.
I appreciate what you're saying, though you must understand that you are not the most unbiased source of information.
That you wouldn't abuse what power can be had, does not mean Origin is the only one who will. They are proving that it takes much, much less than "god-like power" to hassle me and betray my trust. I do not hire an electric utility to rat me out to debt collectors. I hire them to provide electricity. I give them money, they give me units of electricity, and our relationship should end t
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I believe the OP was an example of "sarcasm".
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This is only one company. If you didn't already know origin are giant dicks, but they are the only ones that do this. Sign up with any other retailer and meter provider and this will not happen. Just use metering dynamics or agl and they will look after your data.
That will inevitably change, just as soon as a slick salesman gives them a nice pitch about how such data can be monetized. It is only a matter of time. If the current management won't ever consider it under any circumstances no matter how much money they are offered (unlikely), future management will. Once it becomes a revenue stream, it will be depended upon as part of the budget and will not be reversed. "We will remove this revenue stream to fulfill non-material values" has never been popular among
Re:Shocked (Score:5, Insightful)
With the number of things we need to worry about these days, smart metering is absolutely at the bottom. There are a million ways to fool it, and the information isn't all that interesting any way (unless you get really excited about when people use hair dryers and air con).
So you are willfully neglecting the principle, merely because you see no current significance to its presently immediate applications?
Most of these "things to worry about" boil down to a few major philosophical ideas. You can understand that and focus on the major ideas. You can also fail to understand that and see millions of "issues" that you'd never have time for because you are unable to grasp how they are interrelated and proceed from the same root. Life is full of choices.
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I agree that this is towards the bottom end of importance given other issues we have in society.
However:
1. How the government and companies are behaving in such a "small" area (is violating our privacy small?) while at the same feverishly protecting theirs is a sign of their general attitude.
2. I could accept this issue be abandoned if our governments cost us taxpayers $1 billion / year to run. However our various levels of government cost us many, many, many billions to run each year, so the bastards can a
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cool, so i'm saying no to smart meters. can i safely assume the problem has just magically gone away?
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the obvious way for government/society to control the electricity industry is to control the distribution network, every house in Victoria will get a government funded smart meter that can operate in reverse so now the electricity lobbyists can't bitch about the cost of implementing net metering when the electricity companies are told THEY have no choice about buying back electricity generated by their customers solar panels and what-not.
Sounds like the government in Victoria got hoodwinked, or older Australian electric meters are special. In North America, even our old spinning disc, five dial electric meters run just fine in reverse when power is passing through out to the grid.
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There are some common misunderstandings about smart meters, prior to the remotely read interval meters being rolled out under the banner of smart meters, the term was previously used by retailers to describe meter which would run backwards to record micro-generation back to the grid.
The funny bit is that many of the early remotely read interval meters didn't support energy import (supply back to the grid), and will either need to be replaced later, or may be upgradeable via a remote firmware upgrade to supp
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The meters are provided by the electricity distributor, not the retailer. Generally the distributor is determined by geography, with different distributors having 'won' contracts with the government to supply for a given territory which is strictly defined.
Changing your retailer may change the payment plan you are on and who has secondary access to the information (the distributor and AEMO having primary access), but it won't change what data is collected or by whom.
Lovely (Score:5, Insightful)
Data security is such a good thing. Good thing the hackers didn't get it.
And with the data retention proposals of course no isp is going to be tempted to defray the cost with either on-site or outsourced datamining. And all storage is onsite and under their control.
From the FTA
"An Origin spokesman said the portal was fully compliant with Australian privacy legislation. He said the additional information requested about each household ''adds to the richness of the Origin Smart experience''.
Customer information can only be accessed by staff involved in billing. He said the electricity retailer only shared information with third parties when they had a ''legitimate business need to do so in order to meet our service obligations to our customers''."
"with third parties" the easiest way for the NSA to get all the data in the world would be to sell cheap datamining services as the Narly Stats Advisers.
And government and business wonder why people don't trust them.
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adds to the richness of the Origin Smart experience
... We are talking about a utility company, right? I expect this kind of puffery for consumer products and services, but this is absurd.
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Re:Lovely (Score:5, Interesting)
It might actually be illegal. In a nutshell, the Privacy Act requires that all personal information must be kept appropriately secure. If a company sends personal information to a third party, it requires the company to ensure that they keep the information secure too (e.g. by having a clause in the contract requiring them to meet the requirements of the Privacy Act). It is not possible to provide personal information to a USA company and still meet the requirements of the Privacy Act, because the USA's Patriot Act allows the US government to gain access to that information (without even informing the information owner).
Information not the problem (Score:2)
*grabs some popcorn* I'm sure a lot of people will immediately jump all over this company for sharing the data, even collecting it, and long rants about the usefulness, ethicality, or lawfulness, of said activity. None of that really matters terribly much though. Computers record information, and computers are becoming a part of everything that requires electricity. There's microprocessors now in toasters. The question isn't whether or not information can or should be collected, but how it's used.
Knowledge
Re:Information not the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
The question isn't whether or not information can or should be collected, but how it's used.
Information that isn't collected can't be abused.
Re:Information not the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
An Origin spokesman said the portal was fully compliant with Australian privacy legislation. He said the additional information requested about each household ''adds to the richness of the Origin Smart experience''.
Legislation that isn't specific essentially ensures that data will be misused.
Then again, to the people who passed the law, that was probably a feature, not a bug.
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Information that isn't collected can't be abused.
There is an entire field of mathematics dedicating to filling in the blank when that happens. Sometimes the absence of information says more than its presence... ask any police officer. And as for it not being collected -- remember the TSA body screener fiasco? Anything with a microprocessor, a sensor, and programmable logic can be modified to collect information, and most probably without your knowledge, even if it says it doesn't on the tin. And the other thing, which many slashdot readers can attest to,
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I'm unusual enough that whatever I'm doing is probably an outlier in terms of marketin usefullness, whether it's power consumption, spending habits, location, etc. It pisses me off that data is being collected about me whatever I do, but I would rather focus my energy fighting other battles.I agree with you that its best to just assume everything that can be monitored/logged is and act accordingly.
If enough people are bothered by this, I wonder if it is ecomomic for someone to make a load balancing system t
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I'm unusual enough that whatever I'm doing is probably an outlier in terms of marketin usefullness, whether it's power consumption, spending habits, location, etc.
That's OK, Homeland Security has flagged you as a terrorist and are coming around to investigate your buying habits more closely citizen.
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So, legislation can't prevent logging, tracking, and retention, but it can prevent mining, hacking, and leaking?
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It's better to just assume everything is being logged and recorded; And then pass laws limiting its use -- that way, it'll never become widespread or systematic.
Sounds fine in theory, but there will always be extremely powerful entities that will not limit their use. Like governments for instance.
Legislation after the fact does not mitigate the risk, particularly from the most dangerous entities.
What about less dangerous entities, but nonetheless, very disruptive with their actions like corporations? What if a company could get their hands on that data and deny access to services and products? Like insurance carriers? Sure the law may say no, but how would you
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We only learn one way: By fucking it up.
Uh huh. That's not fucking true. Plenty of men have been fucking up for years trying to keep women happy and still have not learned how yet....
Perhaps you meant the opportunity is there to learn, but we often fuck that up too.
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Plenty of men have been fucking up for years trying to keep women happy and still have not learned how yet....
Hey princess, the same can be said about women in the opposite direction. We're not the ones who're still wearing warpaint.
surprise!? (Score:3)
If you don't want information to get out, don't give it out.
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Which is fine for the above information, but in many places we have no choice but to use smart meters.
Of course you do. Buy a generator.
You're going to need one pretty soon when they start ramping down the amount of electricity you're 'allowed' to use.
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"You're going to need one pretty soon when they start ramping down the amount of electricity you're 'allowed' to use."
Will that be before or after the lizard men activate the mind control chips that we all got with our flu shots?
Or do you actually have electricity rationing in Australia?
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Or do you actually have electricity rationing in Australia?
Answering this seriously, much of the smart networks design - of which smart meters is only a very small component of - is about load balancing the systems to supply energy more efficiently without needing to build excess generation capability. Most of the Victorian electricity generation market is scaled around a handful of hot days every summer (the day of the Black Saturday bushfire it was approximately 48C in Melbourne). In hot weather people crank up the air conditioners, fans, etc... and consume signi
We Are The Government - It's the Law. (Score:4, Funny)
Resistance is V/I.
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if you had not been a coward, I could have modded this up.
Resistance was futile.
As the old saying goes (Score:2)
You bloody fucking idiots! (Score:5, Insightful)
You took a perfectly good cause and ruined it in the name of profit!!!! You have just fed the tinfoil hat crown and ruined smart meters world wide for years to come.
Let's think about this? Hey spouse, want to get a new smart meter? Hell no, I do that and the government will spy on me, the debt collectors will use it against me, do I look like I was born yesterday?
No one is going to want one of these things attached to their house now knowing how they have actually been used. Why the hell couldn't you leave well enough alone and use it for what it was actually meant for?
Smart meter technology could have been one of the greatest real world technological green technologies we have seen in a long time. Instead some short sighted, can't see the next week because tomorrow is in the way greedy bastards ruined it to sell their customers out to debt collectors!
Words cannot begin to describe how short sided and idiotic these people were. I'm sorry they just can't.
I've spent a fair amount of time in Melbourne, I thought well of the people down there. What the hell happened?
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The only perfectly good idea was to sell Australia on ripping out spinning meters and replacing them with expensive networked smart meters vs digital import/export meters.
All with the dream of not having to send so many expensive police cleared workers into suburbia,
As for "technological green technologies"? or "actually meant for?" If people have solar they can do their own electrical audits or get a wireless clamp over their supply
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I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or serious. I hope sarcastic.
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Next is that little Progressive Insurance dongle that sits on the OBDII port in your car to examine your driving habits.
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There was nothing "green" about smart meter technology. It was always about ToU billing and how much someone could screw you over at the end of the day.
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Ah, so you belong to the school of thought that holds that if only human nature wasn't in the way, and if everybody just did what you want them to do, the world would be a wonderful place. Well, I guess we are only up to hundred billion examples that show that people act based on incentives, so obviously you need some more evidence before you actually start believing it. The only way to get people to not do something that can be profitable to them, but harmful to the society is to make it not possible for t
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I dont know much about the Victorian smart metres because I live in Soviet Western Australia where the Government controls power company but I would like a device that would give me a log of my power usage by circuit. When
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*s/state/private contractor on behalf of one or more utility companies.
**+and there's no recourse to get it removed and a standard meter put in because it's deemed "progress". And anything which "progresses" energy delivery and monitoring can be nothing else but a good thing. Right?
Right??
where is this info? (Score:3)
Screw the privacy concerns, I want to know how I'm doing. How much energy are those blokes using per unit of area and per home? What percentage of their energy goes towards climate control?
For myself, we are in a 2200 sq ft house in north Texas with gas furnace and water tank. House was built in 1977. Per year, we use between 6500 and 7000 kWh, and about 60 MCF of gas. About 50% of that is for heating and cooling.
Re:where is this info? (Score:4, Funny)
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Your meter is broken or you're lying through your teeth. Seriously.
This is what passes for a summary now? (Score:2)
All we get is the first sentence of an article copy-and-pasted as a summary now? Does the submitter think this is a good thing or a bad thing? Why should we care about this? What are the implications?
Can't we just turn the whole thing over to a bot and be done with it?
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All we get is the first sentence of an article copy-and-pasted as a summary now? Does the submitter think this is a good thing or a bad thing? Why should we care about this? What are the implications?
Can't we just turn the whole thing over to a bot and be done with it?
No, we can't. At this time, with the current state-of-the-art in software development, it's just too damned difficult and expensive to cause a bot to randomly produce so many spelling and grammatical errors.
Spelling errors alone would be easy, but not grammatical errors such as using a correctly spelled word in the wrong way or understanding the importance of context. We cannot easily produce this kind of AI.
Panopticon; Coming to a household near you (Score:2)
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I think for anyone paying attention to the subject of privacy, it is pretty apparent that tyrannical voyeurism is a State Vice -- behind which are packs of ravenous fiends that will stop at nothing short of pharisaic omniscience. Long before one method of 'evasion' (self defense) becomes popular among the masses, these fiends are devising new countermeasures to foil them. Already, they want to spy on us through household devices [networkworld.com]. It seems a time is coming when options are scarce and opting out will be difficult or impossible [adorraeli.com]. And all they seemingly need to do to pacify us is whisper in a soothing tone words like "transparency"". Yes, transparency, a simplex protocol for the masses.
The scary part is, the Panopticon was intended to be a prison.
In the near future, prison won't be place you send people to. It will be a place you extend to them. Naturally you will be guilty until proven innocent, and since you cannot prove a negative, well, that narrows it down. After all, you might be up to no good.
Fuck your privacy! (Score:2, Informative)
This is about conserving energy and Saving The Planet!
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Wasn't Gandhi shot?
Great. Look where pacifism got him.
And John Lennon. Jean Jaurès. To name a couple more.
I'm sure there's a very long list somewhere.
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snap. I forgot about him.
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What happens if they get hacked? (Score:2)
I imagine some burglars could find this data quite useful, knowing which houses are empty.
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Uh, they can already check this by going to the meter box and checking the spin on the current types of meters.
One situation requires them to trespass to get the information.
1984... (Score:4, Insightful)
is here!
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Did you just wake up from hibernation? 1984 has been here for many years now. We welcomed it with open arms.
Privacy Commissioner is a wet lettuce leaf (Score:4, Informative)
Add to that Nicola Roxon's plans to snoop on Australians Internet Usage. Do you really trust public servants to keep your private that information secret? The only privacy they care about is hiding their mistakes from public. http://www.canberratimes.com.au/national/police-fight-to-keep-corby-secrets-20120922-26dni.html [canberratimes.com.au]
As for your privacy, they don' think you should have any: http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/380194/20120904/ag-nicola-roxon-bats-data-retention-laws.htm [ibtimes.com]
Opted out of PG&E online bills (Score:5, Informative)
I had to opt out of Pacific Gas and Electric's online billing system and go back to paper bills when they changed their EULA to allow more "disclosure". If I just buy power from them, they're subject to regulatory rules, enforced by the California Public Utilities Commission. But they wanted me to sign up for an "online account", which isn't regulated. If you don't sign up, they're not allowed to redistribute your "smart meter" info. If you sign up, you've consented to distribution to "affiliates".
I strongly recommend opting out to PG&E customers (California, Nevada) who are concerned about privacy issues.
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Then you add in a nice bit of fine print, the more they spend on work in the last years the more they can charge the next.
So you have lots of work fitting out suburbia with quality kit, just to keep the 'cost' numbers way way up.
Few new coal, gas units, just gold plated busy work.
At a point many cheap solar panels from China, one inverter with a quality computer controller from Japan and d
I didn't say anything.... (Score:2)
This is why (Score:2)
We love New Zeland.
So the data leaked out (Score:2)
There are a few interesting facts about this smart meter rollout here in Victoria. First of all they require a patent encumbered implementation that is specified in the law. You can't buy the chips to do that anymore since the new chips have the patent problems removed. A friend who owns a patent on some of the technology hasn't seen any payments and he know of about 20 other patents they are violating.
Power bills are going up but wholesale power generation costs are now about $.025 per kWH. About 1/4 of
Re:So how do I... (Score:5, Funny)
Send an email to support@slashdot.com with the word "UNSUBSCRIBE" somewhere in the body.
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A false color map thats totally anonymized over an ever expanding suburbia.
If you pay more you get more layers.
Zoom in and every little colored box lines up with a property
Want near real time data? Solar users? Top energy users? People who use way too little power?
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The Victorian Smart Meters collect data on 30 minute intervals (uploaded daily around midnight to the distributor).
The benefit, if any, to a debt collector, is to project usage patterns to see when it's most likely someone will be home - working on the assumption that consumption increases when the property is occupied.