Digital Electric Meters

I. General Information

1. The Issue
Privacy has been a growing concern over the last decade. The Internet with its ability to allow businesses to track your spending habits, your surfing habits and readily transmit the information has created alarms among privacy rights groups. However, many other sources of personal data exist that have potentially sever consequences on privacy. Real-time Residential Powerline Surveillance (RRPLS) is a method used by electricity companies to monitor power usage. The information can be analyzed to such detail that the utility company knows what appliances are being used. This information, as we will discuss puts privacy at risk at a potentially much larger scale as it becomes more widely implemented. Today governments are under increasing pressures from both advocacy groups and big business. The issue has raised many concerns in the United States and throughout the world. Internet privacy is gaining in importance and recent Canadian and EU legislation has been implemented to combat the risks to individuals. We will look at the trade issues and the inherent violation of human rights. We will then address the corporate and governmental responses to the demand for more privacy.

2. Description

People do it everyday. You go to your local grocery store, reach into your wallet and pull out the club card. The cashier scans the card and you save twenty cents on the bottle of Coca-Cola. Meanwhile, the cash register communicates the information to a database that has been tracking your spending habits since you first started using the card. Innocent enough, the data is merely bits and bytes stored among billions of other records from people all across the United States. But, in the right hands, that data becomes information about you and your lifestyle.
The stories sound like a bad rip-off of Orson Wells' 1984. However, the reality is that 1984 is today.

Real-time residential power line surveillance RRPLS, coined by Rick Crawford (or Non-Intrusive Appliance Load Monitoring as the industry terms it), allows utility providers to monitor the habits of customers. For example, RRPLS can extract "signatures" from power consumption. These signatures can tell the company whether two people shared a shower, or whether a consumer eats a microwave breakfast every morning (Rick Crawford, 1996).

Power companies install electricity usage monitors. These monitors can detect when independently controlled devices are turned on or off, or when they enter a different cycle. For example, the monitor can detect when a dishwasher goes from the rinse cycle to the heat-dry cycle. The information is then compared against a computer database of electrical signatures allowing the electric company to determine which appliances are being used.

In essence, RRPLS allows companies to monitor your daily life, your habits and your preferences. Alone, in the hands of your local Edison Company this information may seem somewhat innocuous. However, you can rest assured that companies possessing such a wealth of data will find ways to generate monetary wealth in exchange for the information. The next time you think how fortunate it is that you received a coupon for your favorite Hormel microwave cheeseburger, maybe you should wonder, "how did they know?"

Yes, RRPLS is a reality. And in reality it is not so widely practiced -- as of 1993, it had only installed in a few thousand homes, according to Crawford -- that currently every electrical supplier has information on every household, but unfortunately, many of your daily activities are tracked by a variety of companies. Armed with this information, these companies sell your data to advertisers and your mailbox becomes full of unwanted junk mail for any product imaginable.

Rick Crawford provides an interesting hypothetical example of the risks from RRPLS.

An individual inadvertently may "broadcast" an illicit sexual liaison to the commercial world via RRPLS data: Contrary to a household's normal pattern, one of its occupants, a 43 year old married male (according to his driver's license data on file), arises early one Saturday morning, showers, shaves with his electric razor, and even irons some clothes. He buys gas in town, then that night he pays for 2 dinners and 2 tickets to a show (all on his credit card). After returning home, the stereo is turned on (a rare event, according to his RRPLS history on file at the electric utility). The data from the water bed indicate an unusual night --- every time the sheets are thrown back,the RRPLS is sensitive enough to detect the water bed heater cycling on for a longer than normal duration (a fact).

The next morning, data indicate only one uncharacteristically long shower, followed by 2 uses of the hair dryer. The second use is much longer than normal for the male occupant, indicating he shared the shower with a long-haired person. Interestingly, during this time, commercial transaction records indicate the occupant's wife is halfway around the globe, on a business trip paid for by her employer. RRPLS data from her hotel room also indicate an amorous overnight visitor. Given the availability of such detailed behavioral profiles, the couple should expect to be inundated with targeted direct mail solicitations from divorce lawyers! If the data are propagated quickly enough, a florist might telephone the next day, offering a special sale on long-stemmed roses (Crawford).

Again, it must be emphasized that the use of RRPLS has been limited to date. There is only a few thousand homes where it is being used by private industry. Additionally US law enforcement agencies have used this technology in the war against drugs to determine what residences are using high-powered lamps to grow marijuana. But this should not downplay the privacy risks that are inherent in such technology. As a matter of fact, there is an increasing lure towards RRPLS.

In 1998, under the guidance of the World Bank, Thailand initiated a program to study the usage of electricity through RRPLS. The purpose of the study was to monitor usage "in urban and rural environments and will also extend to commercial settings. The resulting data base on energy consumption will form a statistically representative foundation from which EGAT can both determine and forecast electricity demand and consequently evaluate existing energy efficiency programs or design new ones" (EPRI, 1998).

Such an undertaking, noble in cause, can have negative consequences. The equipment is installed and the data is gathered. This information in the hands of both the private sector, and in this case, the Thailand government could easily be used for ulterior motives, in addition to the stated intent.

In the United States, electric companies are investigating RRPLS as a means to integrate broadband access to many locations where telephone and Internet service providers fail to provide adequate services. RRPLS allows utility companies to fine tune power generation and thereby reducing costs. The surpluses generated from RRPLS could be invested into laying the fiber-optics and equipment necessary to wire areas of America.

It is difficult to gather any concrete data onto the extent that RRPLS threatens privacy, but it is not impossible to notice that the threat is real. In 1999, EPRI, a developer of RRPLS systems, began offering a product line called PowerShape. This product line provided, namely utility companies, with sector level information about residential and business power consumption so these companies could target consumers more effectively. The data had been gathered from a large number of homes over several years, according to an EPRI news release (EPRI, 1998a).

There are many incentives for utility companies to invest in RRPLS. As we noted above, though briefly, RRPLS can reduce the operations costs of utility companies and increase the revenue streams. With current power shortages gripping the west coast of the United States, such a system could assist in fine-tuning power production and consumption, thus reducing the demand without needs for such drastic steps as rolling blackouts. The technology, with its ability to lower costs and increase revenue, in turn, can allow the companies to invest in other technologies such as Internet access. Additionally, the information gathered by RRPLS can be lucrative for the utility companies. It could be sold to a variety of businesses at a substantial premium.

Alone, in the hands of the utility companies, the information would be too limited to be of use to large commercial segments. Yes, the utility companies would have a general understanding of an individuals preferences, but there is more personal data available. It is when this information is synthesized with personal data from other sources, credit cards, store databases, telephone records, driving records, etc., that the information can become extremely useful to corporations.

Personal data information in such magnitude would allow companies to, much like on the Web, strategically target customers with mailings and offerings. This would reduce the costs of marketing and increase marketing effectiveness. Instead of broad sweeping marketing campaigns where regions are targeted based on demographics, individuals will be targeted, saving a company substantial money and increasing revenues, simultaneously. This incentive helps further the debate over personal data exchange and privacy.

The privacy trade is a serious issue. The risks go beyond a mailbox overflowing with pre-approved credit card offers and special offers. One may easily fall victim to the clever deviant who seeks to use your information to purchase a new stereo or to live your life. Stalking and identity theft are aided by the vast amount of information that is stored about citizens.

In the United States, one Company, Acxiom Corporation, boasts of a database of personal information on over 175 million Americans in over 110 million households with hundreds of records on each person (Junkbusters.org). The total US population is only estimated at 281 million people. And there is a slew of other companies, from personal data collectors (like Acxiom) to credit bureaus (like Experian) with a piece of the privacy pie.

Advocacy groups have strengthened their call for more control; and their voices are being heard. The EU and Canada both have passed legislation that would work to limit the rights of companies to gather and sell personal information. However, both laws have met with criticism from business and rights groups. Businesses argue that eats too far into their bottom line and individuals saying it doesn't go far enough. We will look at the trade in personal information and its violation of the basic right to privacy (as affirmed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights). The conflict is set -- capitalism and competitive advantage versus private rights.

Remember, when you're in the check out lane and you get ready to give out your telephone number... Big Brother is watching.

http://www.american.edu/TED/dataprivacy.htm