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

dispatch.com

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

#331

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #14
Hamuko wrote: post #2

So Republicans have completely flipped on the sovereignity of private companies? Or is this just posturing to please the number one of the GOP (Dave Yost filed a “friend of the court” brief in support of invalidating 2020 votes in Pennsylvania)?

Every state that is not deep blue is not Alaska levels of red. Ohio and much of the mid west is moderately red or moderately blue depending on the policies in question so you get middle of the road policy like this that isn't hard-line one way or the other but appeals to the tons of people on both sides of the isle who think big tech is f-ed up right now. While this move might alienate people on the far right for bei…

Except we don't really have politicians anymore - just parties. Politicians vote in unison now more than ever. So even if the voters of the state are pretty evenly split politically - whichever party is in power of the state is pretty much all that matters.

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

#332

Post by Arch-TK »

supernova87a wrote: post #286
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…

There's not that many things about the smart meter that are much worse than the vulnerabilities of the plain old spinning disk meter. There were many problems with old meters too. And the benefits far outweigh those issues. Smart meters are not being hacked left and right. And your privacy concerns are just a matter of granularity of time. You report your usage monthly -- that is also private information. Smart meter…

The vulnerabilities of the plain old spinning disk meter may have been bad but they couldn't be exploited remotely from someone else's house.

Yes, granularity of the measurements IS a problem. If these things only reported the readings when I pressed a button, I would not be so concerned about privacy (that is if the companies could prove to me that the meters did not report the readings outside of these times).

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

#333

Post by shkkmo »

onethought wrote: post #325
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.

No you can’t. They don’t know if you have generation or battery capabilities, even if they detect generation capabilities they don’t know how much. With that in mind what could they “infer”? I go weeks without triggering a single bit of usage on my meter. I bet you they aren’t thinking: this guy is mining heaps of crypto.

Yes, they absolutely can. Like with any surveillance technology, there are things you can do to obfuscate your patterns, but that doesn't mean that a broad rollout of the technology won't have a negative privacy impact on most customers.

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

#334

Post by ggggtez »

vletal wrote: post #220
ggggtez wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great point. I can't imagine paying for water, and then having the pipe company ban me, and having no recourse.

Not defending Google, but it's because the analogy does not hold. You can be hardly banned from receiving water, because the interaction with it is pretty limited and it does not allow you to directly interact with other individuals.

That doesn't hold up, because an ISP can ban you for any reason they want. It has nothing to do with interacting with other people.

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

#335

Post by acituan »

kixiQu wrote: post #204
loup-vaillant wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I have multiple choices for email, search, video hosting and browsers. Not video hosting you don't. If you want to build a significant English speaking audience, your only real choice is YouTube, because that's where people search from. Seriously, who has a "Vimeo" app on their phone? On their set-top box? Same thing if you want to watch interesting videos: most of the content is on YouTube.

That's not video hosting that's monopolyish, then, that's English-speaking-audience video discovery , which is a quite different proposition.

Video discovery in itself is not monopolyish either. It is the vertical integration of video hosting + video discovery that makes the monopoly.

Hence the solution being a break up; separate youtube-the-video-hosting-infra from youtube-the-recommendation-engine, allow market access to infra, allow competition on video discovery.

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

#336

Post by danielheath »

softveda wrote: post #306
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…

In Australia, in the state of Victoria all meters are smart meter for few years now. They are also growing in number in other states. There has been no hacking incident. in fact it makes peoples life easier by allowing them to track energy usage at every 15 mins interval with historical data using an app from the utility company. This data cannot be sold either. In fact under the Govt. Open API scheme very shortly yo…

The big benefit imo is the load smoothing; statewide, power is cheaper and cleaner than it would otherwise have been.

Right now it’s factories and a few early adopters like me, but anyone can sign up for it and it’s substantially cheaper assuming you don’t mind turning things off at peak times.

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

#337

Post by varispeed »

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?

I am disabled and I was considering growing my own medicine in the event of losing job or not having funds for filling my prescription any more - hopefully that will never happen, but knowing that I have a smart meter, that would add a lot of anxiety that I don't need.

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

#338

Post by rurp »

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?

Why would you assume that increasing the effect of something by orders of magnitude is harmless? Chugging 1 glass of water is great, but 100 will kill you; the only difference is a matter of degree.

A spinning meter can be manually checked to find out if someone is on vacation, but doing that is slow and isn't very worthwhile for criminals. Being able to monitor 100,000 meters at once for empty homes might suddenly be very economical for criminals.

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

#339

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

elliekelly wrote: post #311
jeffgreco wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

I am not sure why I ( or you for that matter ) am forced to defend my stance on privacy by listing things I want to stay private. The objection is that I do not want to have my every move monitored with ever-increasing accuracy.

This seems to be an annoying issue. Any serious proponent of privacy is already taking steps to hold on its vestiges, which include not taking a public stance on it.

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

#340

Post by MereInterest »

onethought wrote: post #325
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.

No you can’t. They don’t know if you have generation or battery capabilities, even if they detect generation capabilities they don’t know how much. With that in mind what could they “infer”? I go weeks without triggering a single bit of usage on my meter. I bet you they aren’t thinking: this guy is mining heaps of crypto.

Power consumption correlated with commercial breaks tells you what show somebody is watching. Power consumption correlated with 9-5 tells you if somebody is working from home. Power consumption correlated with a specific time in the morning tells you when somebody wakes up and subsequently turns the heat on. Lower power consumption over several days tells you when somebody is on vacation.

Are these relatively minor invasions of privacy compared to what advertising companies perform? Yes. But that's no reason to pretend that they aren't privacy-hostile moves on their own.

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