Year: 2010

Smart grid technology offers major improvements and efficiencies for our power system, creating a dynamically responsive grid that can do things like manage peak load energy consumption, optimize transmission routes, smoothly integrate other generation options like solar and wind, and can help users monitor and control their own consumption (including creating more accurate pricing for energy). To do this, though, it needs continuous and real-time data about energy use — and as it turns out individual appliances have a “load signature,” a visible pattern of consumption — which is to say, a way of looking right inside individual homes from the feed of their power use. IEEE has some interesting analysis of the privacy problems and how they could be remediated.

(Hat tip to Solon!)

From Ars Technica: “Once upon a time, users who were careless about security posed a risk only to themselves. But, with the advent of pervasive networking and botnets, that’s no longer true. As a result, lax security has become the equivalent of second hand smoke: it poses a risk to everyone, and needs a security equivalent of a public health campaign and quarantines” Read about it here.

Interesting post on TechCrunch about a new product enabling tracking of Gmail readership (think AOL, circa 1998). According to the article, EmailOracle “inserts an image into each email you send. When that email is opened by the recipient, a call is made to EmailOracle’s servers to get that image. And this lets them know the email has been opened. They then send that information to you by way of a dashboard that is built into Gmail thanks to the plug-in.”

Of course, Gmail (and many other mail clients) allow blocking of images. So the savvy user might well be protected. That said, one might be less skeptical of images from friends, colleagues, or trusted advertisers.

In short, not a huge issue, but still a little sneaky!

Dan Solove has a characteristically thoughtful piece on the intersection of current events and privacy philosophy. In particular, he claims that we aren’t doing enough to educate young people about the future effects of their youthful actions online. He writes:

“For a long time, young people could experiment, do foolish things, and make mistakes yet still have the opportunity to have a second chance. No longer. So much information about their lives is now recorded and available online. People shouldn’t have to live their entire lives with limited opportunities because of something stupid they did when they were a teenager or college student.”

Solove makes a good point, and one that Viktor Mayer-Schönberger has discussed thoroughly in his book, Delete – The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age. Yet one might reasonably wonder whether, as more of our indiscretions become aggregated and visible, the impact of the “something stupid” will become less and less significant. I don’t fully believe this – but I think it’s at least a possibility to be considered when we put on our optimist hats.

Click here for more.

So, unless I’m misunderstanding this whole groups thing on Facebook, it seems that you can now (1) create a group and (2) “force join” people. There seems to be a “leave group” option, but still – shouldn’t this be an opt-in thing? One can only imagine the mischief this sort of thing invites (providing, of course, that my understanding is correct).

UPDATE: Many thanks to Amanda Conley for bringing this article to my attention.