Category: Education

Smart meters & devices – How much do you value your privacy at home?

Posted on by The Information Badger in Digital devices and the environment, Education, Internet of Things, Privacy and Surveillance, Security

The UK’s Smart Meter programme continues make the press, see here for example. Things are unsurprisingly late. Consumers, who’re paying for the £11bn programme through current energy bills, can apparently expect savings of less than £1 a week on bills by 2030. The utility companies haven’t been particularly consumer friendly in their rollouts. There’s been lots of pressure tactics applied to get consumers to accept a Smart Meter installation. Indeed, the best energy deals today mean a consumer must accept having a Smart Meter. The Badger has proudly resisted and doesn’t have one!

Why? Doesn’t the Badger want to save money or the planet? Is it because the Badger is intimidated by modern technology? Or is it just the Badger’s a dinosaur and resistant to change? Good questions. The Badger’s very pragmatic and objective, very technology, environment, and budget aware, and very conscious of how tech is transforming society, so what’s the real reason for not having a Smart Meter? Simple. The Badger values his privacy.

Smart Meters and other smart devices in your home provide granular data that can be analysed to determine what you do inside your home. That’s nectar to organisations and marketing companies who, let’s face it, employ expert lawyers to ensure they can maximise their benefit from the data they capture from you and your home. Articles from Bloomberg and the Daily Mail are worth a read. They reinforce that we must not be naïve when it comes to how such data is used.

The Badger is an advocate of ‘An Englishman’s home is his castle’. Smart Meters and smart devices encroach on that being the case. Unlike twenty years ago, today’s smart technology means you no longer really have privacy in your own home. Others will pooh-pooh that statement and assert legal protections are in place, but should you trust that’s proven to be the case with the companies involved? Hmm. The only safe way of keeping what you do within your home private is not to have Smart Meters or devices like those in the Bloomberg article in the home in the first place.

So, there you have it. The Badger values privacy within his home way above any future saving of £1 a week – a loaf of bread – in energy bills. In fact, the Badger’s significantly reduced home energy bills without a Smart Meter and still remains an advocate for technology that preserves individual rights, freedoms and brings real benefit to society. Does the case for the UK Smart Meter programme really stack up? Views differ. All the Badger knows is that ‘the Badgers home is his castle’. Smart inanimate interlopers will be resisted until privacy within the home can be guaranteed…

Privacy & data protection education doesn’t auger well for social media goliaths…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Education, Privacy and Surveillance, Security, Uncategorized

In the last 20 years ‘data’ has exploded. It’s gone from scarcity to abundance and today it’s easy to store and continues to accumulate exponentially. Businesses now use clever data analytic applications to improve their operations, knowledge of their customers, their products and services, and their positioning in the markets they focus on. Data has, of course, always been important in the business world. Indeed, businesses have closely guarded their data for decades, because if they didn’t competitors will put them out of business!

So, if businesses guard their data so closely, why haven’t many of us been so good at guarding our own on the internet and social media? Simple. Way back, we were attracted to the fact that email and social network services were free. At the time we either didn’t think about issues of privacy and protection, or we ignored them. In addition, the service providers didn’t make it very easy to understand how they would use the data gathered when we used our accounts.

Things have of course moved on. We’ve become less naïve, more circumspect and better aware of the darker and negative aspects of the internet and social media. Today we have a better understanding of the importance of online privacy, security and data protection, and politicians are more focused and adept at challenging the morals, ethics, and legal obligations of the goliath companies involved. The Badger, however, finds it quite sobering that debates raged ten years ago on whether user privacy, online security and data protection should be taught in UK schools (see here, for example), but it’s really the last three years or so in which the subject has gained momentum (see, for example, here, here and here). That’s very encouraging, but of course long overdue given that anyone born in the last twenty years has grown up with the internet and social media as core utilities in their life.

TechMarketView’s Richard Holway believes social media has reached a peak. The Badger agrees. Why? Because youngsters going through education today will be more knowledgeable about privacy and the value of their information. They are likely to be less fickle and more careful, and this surely doesn’t auger well for the social media giants. With regulation on the horizon, and ever more circumspect users, it’s hard not to conclude that the future for social media companies is less rosy than the past. Facebook’s just celebrated it’s 15th birthday. Impressive! But times they are a’changin…

Do we, as individuals, think enough about digital devices and the environment?

Posted on by The Information Badger in Digital devices and the environment, Education

How many of us really think about our impact on the planet when we use our digital devices? Few, especially youngsters. The burning of hydrocarbon fuels, heavy industry, plastics and deforestation tend to be higher in our awareness than the impact of tech and ICT.

The Badger’s young nephews neatly illustrated this in a chat over a meal at which their smart devices were banished to their coat pockets by their parents. The youngsters were serious and passionate about recycling, saving the planet from plastic, ‘green’ vehicles, and preserving nature, but they were stumped when asked about the environmental impact of using their digital devices. Their faces were a picture as it was explained that in addition to the manufacturing process, every interaction with their devices involved a communication network, a data centre, and thus a small impact on the environment.

The largest tech and ICT enterprises have long focused on ‘Green ICT’, but did you know that ICT could account for 25% of electricity demand and 5.5% of global carbon emissions by 2025? Did you know that a 2018 paper from Canada’s McMasters University suggests ICT could account for 14% of global emissions (equivalent to ~50% of global transportation emissions) by 2040? Did you know that by 2020 the energy consumption related to smartphones may surpass that of PCs and laptops, and that smartphones are likely to be the most environmentally damaging devices due to manufacturing emissions and the use of precious metals mined at high cost? The Badger suspects you didn’t.
So, what’s the answer to the question in the blog’s title? Simple. The answer’s ‘No’. But we should. Children are online from an ever earlier age – see here for example – so it’s important they , and indeed we all, think about digital device environmental matters as a matter of routine. There’s an impact on our planet with every use of a smartphone, every piece of streamed music or video, every email, every new connected tech gadget bought, and every robot or autonomous vehicle you might encounter in the future.

The Badger’s motives are just to raise awareness and make you think! Health professionals tell us that if we eat a balanced diet, exercise, and enjoy our indulgences in moderation and with common sense then – as Star Trek’s Mr Spock might say – we’ll live long and prosper. If we throw into the mix more thinking about how we as individuals interact with the world through our digital devices, then the planet will ‘live long and prosper’ too…