A New Way to Gather Data on People

Utility companies, by gathering hundreds of billions of data points about us, could reconstruct much of our daily lives -- when we wake up, when we go home, when we go on vacation, perhaps even when we draw a hot bath. They might sell this information to marketing companies -- perhaps a travel agency will send brochures right when the family vacation is about to arrive.

Law enforcement officials might use this information against us ("Where were you last night? Home watching TV? That's not what the power company says ... "). Divorce lawyers could subpoena the data ("You say you're a good parent, but your children are forced to sleep in 61-degree rooms. For shame ..."). A credit bureau or insurance company could penalize you because your energy use patterns are similar to those of other troublesome consumers. Or criminals could spy the data, then plan home burglaries with fine-tuned accuracy. <...>

Privacy expert Alessandro Acquisti, who studies the intersection of economics and privacy at Carnegie Mellon University, said privacy issues routinely arise even when companies that collect data do so with all good intention. Many times, data that collected is harmless in isolation, but becomes troublesome when combined with other data, or examined by a third party for patterns.

The difference is that you can still mostly decide what you put online or on your computer. But you have a higher expectation of privacy inside your home, and might not realize that the data gathered about your energy usage could be used to reconstruct part of your life (potentially in erroneous ways).

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/10/smart-grid-privacy-issues-big-brother.php

Gad! Your washer is spyin' on you.

A combination of web page viewing habits, and even possibly cable viewing by a cable box tracking what channels you watch, could construct what information you view. Add buying habits into that, and there is alot of data about people that could be processed.

More advanced systems could even tailor pushed out Internet or cable shows to groups of different views that are flagged by some group or category. Entire different shows could be available to different viewer sets, just like people can view different web pages.

And it could all be tracked really easy. The use of information for marketing is only the tip of the iceberg of data collection systems. Theoretically models of what constitutes a compliant person and a future leader or non conformist could be compiled simply by determining effectiveness of marketing techniques by comparing viewing to buying habits.

Many social control ideas could be implemented. The one thing that stops it from happening is that there are enough people that would mention it if it was done. Unless people that mentioned it could be kept off the tv or web, such a usage of data would be known.

So much of the worries about over use of gathered data is more conspiracy then reality.

What would you do anyway?

As far as if somebody will analyze this data or something like this, I don't put anything past anybody.

Too many conspiracies about "spying" have unfortunately turned out to be true.

Pushing out content to individual houses would leak. It would far easier and more expected to be done either by sectors, or by the same effect that is achieved by giving each side of an intended divided audience a completely different message. Fox vs MSNBC for example, but then having both not talk about corporate or money issues.

Theoretical red flag tagging based on patterns is possible, but such a wide scale thing would leak out. Even the big database that was erased after 9/11 the one that did degrees of separation studies, leaked out. So most of the stuff is to present an image of something like that happening. Then from the image is created a numbing or depression.

Although I do believe it is important to talk to people you meet in life for that reason, and also for that reason never hold on to assumptions built off of media that has specific agendas. But not holding on to assumptions is always a good thing, and most of the media are good people that would leak any orchestrated attempts at such things. But it makes for some fun Conspiracy Theories.

Of course you might have to get off your computers and cell phones too if you want to be free
of the information gathering.

Traditional advertising is not going to survive the digital revolution, but marketing will then
become dependent on tracking information and anticipating your tastes and needs. Kind of like
sites like Amazon are already doing. The INFORMATION AGE is here...

Only citizens need privacy and we have been rebranded as consumers.
Why do you hate America? :sarcasm:

they pee on.

I know some household monitoring goes on. I had a couple of friends stay with me for 2 weeks in my apartment while their roof was repaired.

The week after they left somebody from the rental office came to see if somebody else was living with me. They mentioned water usage in an offhand remark. They were vexed when they couldn't find a trace of somebody else.

I told them my cats liked to flush the toilet.

I laugh at it also.

They can eff everything up and cause instability when loose.

:rofl:

If such means were used against any citizens for any reason, then the same tracking should be done of private sector company officials and public officials, and that information should be available to the public without amplification or selection for reasons of targeting.

That's the only reason I comment on it.

You're a consumer and all rights belong to the market.
Don't you know all the freedoms in the Constitution are Economic freedoms. The market is free to exploit consumers. The government is owned by the corporations that control the market. M$Greedia are owned and controlled by said corporations. People and rights, citizens and rights - WTF are you smoking? :sarcasm: