Comments on: The Smart Grid Faces Off Against Privacy Rights http://www.environmentalleader.com/2009/04/09/the-smart-grid-faces-off-against-privacy-rights/ The Executive's Daily Green Briefing Mon, 23 Nov 2009 21:16:51 -0800 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Alison Erlenbach http://www.environmentalleader.com/2009/04/09/the-smart-grid-faces-off-against-privacy-rights/comment-page-1/#comment-147832 Alison Erlenbach Wed, 16 Sep 2009 17:34:28 +0000 http://www.environmentalleader.com/?p=13121#comment-147832 While privacy concerns are valid, I think most consumers have grown used to the data collected by corporations. My credit card company, bank, utility, cable, amazon, facebook, twitter, google, and countless other organizations know quite a bit more about my behavioral patterns than even I do. Companies that collect consumer statistics can "mash" huge amounts of data to obtain comprehensive information about my lifestyle. Thus, while privacy concerns are valid, our privacy will be more protected if we were able to see the same data collected by private companies. This way we could take steps to protect truly private data, and would be able to use the same models credit card companies and telemarketers use to bait us into bad deals. If we understood more about our decisions, we would make better ones. If we don't collect this data ourselves, others still will, and they will use it against us. While privacy concerns are valid, I think most consumers have grown used to the data collected by corporations. My credit card company, bank, utility, cable, amazon, facebook, twitter, google, and countless other organizations know quite a bit more about my behavioral patterns than even I do. Companies that collect consumer statistics can “mash” huge amounts of data to obtain comprehensive information about my lifestyle.

Thus, while privacy concerns are valid, our privacy will be more protected if we were able to see the same data collected by private companies. This way we could take steps to protect truly private data, and would be able to use the same models credit card companies and telemarketers use to bait us into bad deals. If we understood more about our decisions, we would make better ones. If we don’t collect this data ourselves, others still will, and they will use it against us.

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