Student Post: Smart Grid Technology v. Privacy

We have been discussing the development of the electricity grid in the United States. We have not yet discussed the future of America’s grid but I’m sure everyone has heard of the concept of a smart grid. This smart grid technology has been the talk of the last decade when discussed the future of the electricity grid. The smart grid has many aspects which will include instantaneous metering and much more accurate metering. Ideally this ability to now when and where demand is coming from will lead to an ability to more accurately direct power and lead to better conservation practices by lowering consumption or shifting it to non-peak times.

           

I came across an interesting take on the smart grid that had never even occurred to me but probably presents equally interesting questions for our legal profession as the building and citing of the new grid – Privacy. http://www.miller-mccune.com/politics/smart-grid-challenges-individual-privacy-32463/

The article describes how the accuracy of metering on an individuals home could tell the company monitoring the usage many things including, “ how many people are in the house, what they do, whether they’re upstairs, downstairs, do you have a dog, when do you habitually get up, when did you get up this morning, when do you have a shower.” The article sees this as valuable data (similar to facebook knowing personal information about you they could theoretically sell) that the companies could sell without your knowledge. They basically call for a control on this information similar to health records. Clearly as the smart grid comes into reality across the US the potential is there for the threat the author sees.

I see the concern the author raises about access by anyone willing to buy it to the information the company holds but the author does not address the possibility of access by government entities, which would be more of a legal concern to me. It seems an open question to me whether a search warrant would be required to look at the electricity usage.Kyllo v. U.S.disallowed the thermal imaging of a home without a search warrant but the court has upheld the sniff search of luggage in the airport as well as sniff searches of cars in indiscriminant checkpoints. It seems likely the government would also argue that by connecting to the grid the individual is putting their information out there to be seen and there is no legitimate expectation of privacy underKatzand similar to theMillercase which held no expectation of privacy in bank records.

It seems to me that this is a serious concern moving forward. Clearly it is not a reason to not develop the smart grid, as the benefit would easily outweigh the costs, but I’m sure you will see an issue similar to this in court cases in the not too distant future. Then our increasingly transparent society will have to come to a consensus on what types of intrusion into personal data may be acceptable.