Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ohio sues Google, seeks to declare the internet company a public utility

dispatch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 748 posts

Re: Ohio sues Google, seeks to declare the internet company a public utility

#311

Post by elliekelly »

jeffgreco wrote: post #245
varispeed wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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

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.

Re: Ohio sues Google, seeks to declare the internet company a public utility

#312

Post by ribosometronome »

shkkmo wrote: post #296
idiotsecant wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What sort of horrible privacy issues do you suppose your smart meter has? You already tell your utility how much power you use.

Data aggregated per month is very different from data aggregated per hour or per minute. You can infer far more personal information from the latter.

You can also bill users for peak usage times when electricity is expensive or requires falling back on non-renewable resources for production with hourly data.

Re: Ohio sues Google, seeks to declare the internet company a public utility

#313

Post by dragonsky67 »

shkkmo wrote: post #296
idiotsecant wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What sort of horrible privacy issues do you suppose your smart meter has? You already tell your utility how much power you use.

Data aggregated per month is very different from data aggregated per hour or per minute. You can infer far more personal information from the latter.

Do you carry a mobile phone. If so, you have bigger privacy problems than how much power you use per minute.

Re: Ohio sues Google, seeks to declare the internet company a public utility

#314

Post by elliekelly »

supernova87a wrote: post #307
varispeed wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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?

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.

Re: Ohio sues Google, seeks to declare the internet company a public utility

#315

Post by ipaddr »

caslon wrote: post #111
adrr wrote: post #95

But I have multiple choices for email, search, video hosting and browsers. I don’t have any choice for water, electricity, sewer, on any other public utility. I am sure there are a bunch of people on here that don’t use any Google products and are using DuckDuckGo, Firefox, ProtonMail, Vimeo. There are many choices.

Google-avoider checking in! It's actually really easy to avoid it. DuckDuckGo's search quality is better, Firefox is deteriorating daily but still looks and feels better than Chrome does, email should really be avoided but there are dozens of really good email services, and their ad service doesn't need a replacement for obvious reasons (just block it).

Firefiox: I remember the first few versions since the rewrite. It was very fast. Fast forward to today and it's so slow.

What is the reason? Are the privacy changes affecting this by using more resources or pages are requesting domains that hang for too long?

It gives rust a bad name because this is one of the bigger rust products I know.

Re: Ohio sues Google, seeks to declare the internet company a public utility

#316

Post by asddubs »

supernova87a wrote: post #212

A big problem with software and people who write software (often) is that software doesn't like all the ways that human beings misbehave, change their minds, don't have immutable states, and don't fit into the categories you build for them. So any system that has a duty to serve everyone eventually ends up with an operational component that has almost as much human interaction and problem solving required as the soft…

one reason I've heard against smart meters is that it would make it easy for power companies to start charging non commercial users for apparent power rather than real power, as a way to indirectly raise prices.

Re: Ohio sues Google, seeks to declare the internet company a public utility

#317

Post by wyager »

crocal wrote: post #270
wyager wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I trust "political organizing" (codeword for astroturfing and cathedral control) less than I trust Google's profit interests.

I guess you are ready for dictatorship then?

Could you explain this take further? I’m tempted to write this off entirely, but I’m curious if you actually have some reason to associate corporatism with monarchy.

Re: Ohio sues Google, seeks to declare the internet company a public utility

#318

Post by shkkmo »

supernova87a wrote: post #302
shkkmo wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Data aggregated per month is very different from data aggregated per hour or per minute. You can infer far more personal information from the latter.

I think it's only a matter of degree. And at every level someone can complain. So where do you draw the line? Watching a meter spin or reading it once a month you can tell if someone is on vacation. Isn't that equally private and personal information?

It is a matter of degree, but that degree is not small. Anytime you decrease the interval, you need to justify the commensurate loss of privacy. You can't just handwave away these concerns like posters in this thread are doing.

A rough inference of which months might involve vacations (data about which is probably already being sold from other sources) is far less invasive than a daily record of your sleep cycle.

With the lack of privacy laws in the US, it is pretty much a given that this data will be sold as soon as the private utility companies in the US start collecting it.

Re: Ohio sues Google, seeks to declare the internet company a public utility

#319

Post by Arch-TK »

labcomputer wrote: post #277
Arch-TK wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of rational reasons for not wanting a smart meter. Don't let the irrational people detract from the fact that there are many real problems with smart meters. Especially lots of privacy issues. In the UK, I report my own meter readings and the electrical company probably only really ever goes out once every few years when tenancies change. So I actually don't see what money it saves them asides from t…

Sure, but those not-irrational reasons are locale-specific. I've never heard of someone self-reporting the meter reading here in the US. The meter still keeps a local log of how much energy was used, so worrying about being framed for using too much energy still feels a bit irrational to me. OTOH, smart meters allow the utility to charge TOU rates, which helps even out the load on the grid. It benefits the utility, o…

If a smart meter gets hacked it's not unreasonable to imagine the local logs are compromised. This is a bit like all the arguments against voting machines but in a less concerning setting.

TOU rates are a thing you can get with pre-programmed meters. They may not benefit the utility company as much as tailored rates but they probably have 90% of the benefit while having 0% of the privacy implications.

The companies don't even have to sell the data, they can just mine it for information, such as which rate to automatically put you on once your contract finishes to make the most money out of you etc.

Re: Ohio sues Google, seeks to declare the internet company a public utility

#320

Post by justbored123 »

This is simply g*rbage.I wish all my utilities were as cheap and amazing as google. Why don't we go the other way and make a law demanding that?

- Google services are free. If they are a utility they should charge you like any utility, go ask Texans and Californians about their recent power bills.

- There is an endless amount of comparable alternatives to Google, here you have 17 https://www.searchenginejournal.com/alternative-search-engin.... The idea that google is just as important and monopolistic as you power provided is just incredibly stupid. Sorry about been rude but I have heard from the same crowd that "facts don't care about your feelings" and that door swings both ways.

- Nobody forces you to use Google, its not the first option installed in a Windows computer, that would by Bing.com and I don't see any complaints. Users go out of their way to go to that site because is the best option. It's a perfect example of the free market. And even in the case of android phones the different brands like Samsung or Motorola make that call. Google gives you an amazing OS completely free.

Post reply on HN