All your fears about Smart meters confirmed

[David]

Also on the front page of the Daily Fail.

"Our novel technology assesses an individual?s personal physical and mental-health by monitoring their electricity usage at home. This is achieved by processing data collected from smart meters, which captures detailed habits of an individual?s interactions with electrical devices. The technology identifies any anomalies in a person?s routine, which is the result of a health-related condition. For example, an Alzheimer?s patient leaving an oven on or person suffering with depression remaining awake at night. This is achieved by employing advanced data analytics, known as machine learning, to understand trends in electricity usage. The system can identify when an individual gets up, goes to bed, eats, their location within the home and a bad night?s sleep. Essentially, the technology creates a personalised profile of the user?s behaviour at home."

So spying on you and profiling you through the Smart Meter.

Which we were assured would never happen.

Next step targeted advertising.

Cheers

Dave R

[Dave Plowman (News)]

And pray tell how a smart meter knows just what has been left on? It could detect an abnormal load in the middle of the night, I suppose. So best to tell it when you have a party. Or do the washing at night.

[David]

Also some people may leave the light on all night, or lie in the dark when depressed.

Anyone with random timed lighting when they are on holiday may get their door broken down, of course.

I can see all sorts of technical issues, but I'm more concerned that there is a proposal to centrally log and analyse detailed personal data about electricity usage profiles, linked to both the home address and one or more disease diagnoses.

Not that these would ever be accessed by anyone but incorruptible trained professionals, of course.

Cheers

Dave R

[spuorgelgoog]

And a piece in the Metro today about online shopping at night.

So now Google will be able to tell you're depressed and encourage you to buy more stuff you don't need.

Owain

[Michael Chare]

They can collect information from the Nest thermostats. A good reason to avoid that product.

[michael adams]

You haven't quoted any context, or who made that claim. And so as such it has no value whatsoever.

In fact it sounds like a claim from a software provider touting for business. In fact such technology which isn't particularly novel in itself, might well prove useful in monitoring vulnerable patients who having given their consent to this surveillance are otherwise being left their own devices.

The real scare story here isn't Big Brother accumulating even more information on the incredibly boring lives being led of by around 99% of the population, but the fact that such software might be used as a possible justification for reducing actual care in the form of home visits or actual human monitoring at all.

Just a money saving exercise in other words.

< remainder left in to provide context>

Thus fulfilling the abiding fantasy of the tin-foil-hat brigade - that they lead such interesting lives that Big Brother is itching to collect masses of data all about them

Some hopes.

Er, light bulbs, electrical appliances.

Whatever next ?

michael adams

...

[Harry Bloomfield]

David formulated on Monday :

It must have been a desperately slow news day, for them have had to make something up like that. Most of what is described is simply impossible for anyone with half clue about them.

[Brian Gaff]

I think though that its a benign way to stay independent and not to have to have a carer visit people who are doing OK. You would opt in of course. I'm not saying that these things cannot be used for bad things, but like all things, they are envisaged as a good thing, helping people be independent and saving money for the service provider. The problem I see is that if this data is the property, of say, Npower, how much will they try to screw out of the NHS to let them have it, I wonder. It could end up like the way the drug companies 'allowed' shortages to occur in the supply chain to drive up prices. Shades of the oil rich nations restricting oil to get more money per barrel. The unacceptable face of capitalism once again. So stop worrying about snooping and start worrying about the corporate fleecing of the state and us.

Brian

[Brian Gaff]

Yes the internet of things is far more scary I think. The thing is, sooner or later somebody will hack the system and cause absolute havoc.

I see my local MP wants us to build power storage systems all over the place to make renewable energy more competitive. So large batteries or what? Mind you he is Edward Davey. Brian

[polygonum_on_google]

In some ways, that is a major indictment of the idea. That the inferences drawn from the smart meters could very well be substantially or wholly wrong.

It is so very easy for those developing the software to convince themselves that they are correctly interpreting the information. But it is extraordinarily difficult to cater for the huge range on confounding factors. From the trivial, for example regarding things on a time switch as evidence of healthy human activity, to things that are likely far more subtle and difficult to account for.

[Marland]

Or more sinister, ? We haven?t secured enough power for the country, we deem you healthy enough not to need a lot of heating today so are rationed to x kilowatts before we cut you off. If you want to be warm go and do some exercise.? I suppose a generator on an exercise bike would let the user charge their phone

GH

[Dave Liquorice]

You've not looked at your electricity use profile then. I can see from our logs of electricity consumption, when we go to bed, when we get up, if we are in or out during the day, what time we have our evening meal, how many times the kettle goes on, when the telly goes on, when SWMBO'd has left the iron on. I can't tell where either of us are in the home, but if you're living on your own... I'm a little dubious about how useful or reliable any flags that such a data analaysis might raise are but in general terms "it" will "know".

[Dave Liquorice]

It learns. It may no know which particular device has just switched on (or off) but it'll know the history of something of the same load switching on/off.

That's were the learning comes in. Something on a time switch or thermostat going to have a reasonably easy to spot profile. Time switch driven events happen at or very close to the same time, even with a 7 day or 5+2 time switch. Thermostatic events may have a variable time between them but the heating or cooling between the essentailly fixed on/off temperatures is going to be very similar. Programable stats will have time of day element but like a simple time switch not that hard to spot.

[tabbypurr]

snip

The first thing that happens when I interact with most companies (other than simply paying for goods at a till) is they go for a data grab, and it normally includes data irrelevant to the business being done. It has nothing to do with interesting lives or crazy people imaginining they're the centre of attention, it has simply become a business norm these days. Data has commercial value and companies are routinely overestimating the value of it & grabbing whatever they can.

NT

[tabbypurr]

Lights are steady loads of 5-50w typically with low pf. TVs have a varying load pattern that I think is fairly characteristic. Heating has a recognisable pattern Microwaving ditto Hobs & ovens ditto Small appliances I don't know if it would resolve among the other noise Power tools should be fairly easy to spot PIR exterior lights are quite characteristic loads

So it probably is possible to work out mostly what's going on if the data is sampled frequently enough. Of course interpretations of that will be riddled with errors. The idea that anyone awake at night is depressed is rather silly.

NT

[Andy Burns]

That's OK if you have (near) real-time access to your consumption. By default a smart meter only takes a reading once a month, you'd have to actively choose daily or per half-hour readings.

[Brian Reay]

I'm no fan of Smart meters but their potential use to monitor the elderly / infirm etc seems a very good idea- if it is found to be reliable.

As for using the same data to 'spy' on people, even for advertising, I'm less paranoid than some. If EON / Southern Electric want to know that I have a coffee mid morning, dinner around 6pm, the heating is set for xyz etc ....., is it really that invasive? If a total stranger asked if I enjoyed a mid morning coffee, I'd not worry about answering.

[Chris Green]

The only thing we have on a time switch is our immersion heater. There's also an electric door opener (for the chickens!) running from a photocell but that will vary a lot according the the weather as well as the time of year. I doubt if anything else is regular at all as we're quite a large household (4 adults, lots of dogs and cats, etc.) and one of us in particular lives a rather irregulat and 'inside out' sort of timetable.

[Chris Green]

But the meters don't (as far as I know) analyse the power factor of the load do they? ... and even if they did then they don't have the ability to analyse a mixed load and thus work out which of several devices you have turned on.

[Chris Green]

Surely you'd need a continuous plot to tell you anything even remotely useful (apart from how much to charge that is).