Environmental Engineering Reference
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the future panopticon: a perfect storm of corporate/government control that will peer into
private citizens' homes and usurp individual liberty and local decision-making authority.
observe all inmates of an institution without their being able to tell whether they are
being watched. Although Bentham's Panopticon was primarily envisioned as the ideal
society's pervasive inclination to observe and discipline all participants. A panopticon
creates a social environment of neurotic anxiety that knows no limits. Watchers operate
in a state of heightened awareness of the perpetual riskiness of the system, while those
under observation experience consciousness of their permanent visibility. In the smart grid
panopticon, no walls or locks are necessary for domination.
Losing Control and Loss of Privacy
Contemporary social critics assert that smart grid enables the deployment of panoptic
structures throughout society. Using smart grid technologies such as smart meters, sensors,
and two-way communication, utilities or others could track users' activities, while
user-generated content means that daily social activity may be recorded and shared with
others, including corporate sector actors. The fear of “Big Brother” looms large in many
sectors of society. Even if the panopticon model is nothing more than a marketing tool used
by utilities providers in the hopes of better segmenting their markets or coming to know
their customers better, it is still an invasion of privacy. Having the potential to observe
everything a person does in their own home is detrimental to democratic values and raises
Related privacy concerns are directly associated with energy and demand management.
They stem from smart meters recording and transmitting energy use data and the fear that
these data will be intercepted and used by unauthorized parties to gain insights into both
electricity use and individual behavior. Industrial customers may fear that electricity use
information will provide competitors with information on business activities. Residential
customersmaybelievethathomeenergyusedataprovidesadetailedyetunwantedwindow
into their lives. The two major concerns are that smart meter data would reveal personal
in-home behavior and that measures to protect privacy may be inadequate. How energy
data are transmitted, protected and stored, and kept from misuse has far-reaching
implications.
Uses of existing data provide justifications for these concerns. Monthly metered data
have recently been used by law enforcement to identify suspected grow-ops or
provide law enforcement with significantly more information on building occupant
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