Privacy: Sinister side of smart metering?

How would you feel about your neighbors knowing about your energy consumption habits? That's a real issue with the new wave of smart meters set to implement smart grid features such as tracking energy use for load-shedding schemes.

Recently, privacy experts at a smart grid privacy conference in Madrid warned that the meters can reveal intimate details about your habits such as when you eat, what time you go to sleep or how much television you watch.

The real concern isn't so much with inquisitive neighbors so much as with prying marketers and governments.

Says Christopher Wolf, the co-chairman and founder of the Washington-based Future of Privacy Forum, "It is really an issue of how much information about us can be collected by a third party, how much do they really need, how long do they need to keep it, what should the rules be on retention and when should destruction of it occur."

Physorg.com picked up the story:

http://www.physorg.com/news176703307.html