Houses, Papers, and Effects: Updated

This blog writes about control systems, sensors, and the internet of things (IoT). Long-time readers know that I am concerned about privacy, and how the techniques of big data can erode privacy through accumulation of the most insignificant facts. Occasionally, I even slide over into my perception that the Supreme Court Justices all too frequently err because they do not understand technology, and how easy it is to erode the protections our Constitution grants us.

In pre-revolutionary times, officers of the crown used writs of assistance to justify widespread searches of people and their possessions. The business documents and correspondence would frequently be confiscated and or destroyed. This violated the rights of Englishmen, long established, to be secure in their homes from even the King’s men, unless there was a warrant served, based upon testimony made under oath. This violation of long-standing law was a significant factor in convincing many that a break with England was necessary.

In the 18th century, people kept their most significant documents in their desk at home. If they wanted to transport their papers or to conduct business, they would bring their papers, often in a locked box. There was no easy way to make copies of these documents; if they were lost they were irreplaceable. There was no general right recognized which permitted government agents to check the contents of these papers. In the Declaration of Independence, the then colonists chastised their government for “for abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies”

The Bill of Rights codifies things that governments must not do to its citizens, no matter their motive. The 4^th amendment codifies the handling of personal and business documents.

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Even mail, sorted, handled, and delivered by a government agency, the post office, could not be searched while in transit without specific warrant.

Today, we store our documents in the cloud. If we don’t store them there, we back them up to the cloud. Our correspondence goes through Gmail. We share documents with partners using DropBox. Every persona and professional document we have is stored on a computer somewhere, and usually off-site.

Because the Justices have not understood technology, they have treated this information as if it were transactional documents belonging to the company that holds it. Electronic documents held in the clouds by a third party today receive almost no protection. These documents are indistinguishable from the private correspondence and papers of colonial times. They are no more novel than papers typed out with a typewriter were different from those hand-copied in prior times.

There are several proposed laws in congress that would assign to these electronic documents the same protections as are held by paper documents. In essence, these laws would declare that our electronic backups, our email, and our cloud shared storage are exactly the type of papers and effects described in the fourth amendment.

A petition as whitehouse.gov asks the executive branch to support these laws.

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/reform-ecpa-tell-government-get-warrant/nq258dxk

Please, go to whitehouse.gov and sign the petition.

Thinking about Snowden and Smart Grids

Privacy activists have long warned about the massive data collection enabled by smart grids. Utility representatives have long defended the smart grid by asserting that they have no interest in analyzing the lives of their customers. The recent revelations of government activity in the US make that defense irrelevant, as company after company confesses to have shared operational data with the government agencies. The lesson of current headlines is that it does not matter who collects big data, or what their motives are. Big data is a honeypot that will attract surveillance by someone.

One of the oldest stories of smart grids is of early researchers attempting to analyze the activity in a house from the meter. Early going was slow, as this was before modern tools were available. Still, after a couple weeks, analysts had figured out most of the electrical activity in the house: the big load of the air conditioning, the periodic spikes of the refrigerator, etc. Still, one activity seemed to fit no pattern.

Each week day, between fifteen and forty-five minutes after everyone left the house, there was a change in electrical activity. The researchers were stumped for some time. Eventually, they realized that when the family dog decided that “they” were finally gone for the day and not coming back, it would get up onto the nice warm waterbed. This changed the heating pattern for the bed.

After the researchers tracked this pattern for longer, they realized they could tell whether the dog was sleeping peacefully on the water bed and when the dog was restless.

In recent news, we have seen the US government asserting that there is no privacy right to transactional metadata. Times, durations, and phone numbers of all calls are shared freely. Businesses are subject to prosecution if they do not cooperate freely, or even if they reveal that they have been asked for information. Sniffers in data centers capture even secure information after decryption, so that even the internet service provider cannot see what is being tracked and recorded.

Some communications providers, such as Verizon, have bad records of privacy protection; they respond to all requests without push-back. Others occasionally push back on over-reaching calls. Based on their stated goals and communications documents, the utilities plan to share freely.

In the US, the utilities develop communication standards within the UCAIUG association. The UCAIUG develops communication processes and business process common to all the US Utilities. The standard for communication of meter data to third parties developed in the UCAIUG is OpenADE (Automated Data Exchange). It is notable that in their own OpenADE development documents, exchange of information with law enforcement is given a higher priority than exchange of information with customers.

The stated priorities of OpenADE have always been troubling. In the last few weeks, even the skeptical have come to see that big data is irresistible to government agencies. Protests by power utilities that they do not want to use the data are meaningless. FISA court data requests typically are known only to small numbers of a company’s employees. Discussing the requests openly, either within or beyond the company can violate federal law. A couple years ago, if worried publicly about this, one could be accused of being a conspiracy theorist. Today, doing so is evidence merely that one reads the paper.

We have it in each of our hands to preserve our own privacy. Consumer technologies exist to smooth power curves and permanently shift load. Energy storage technologies able to accept and provide trickle charges within a business or home can be used to hide the details of our activities and our lives. These technologies don’t let energy data out while they accomplish the goals of smart energy. You can adopt them, or you can allow further monitoring of every activity in your life.

Whatever one feels about Snowden’s revelations about current behavior of the NSA, they are part of making public how government agencies will make use of any sufficiently large trove of data gathered by others. Other news demonstrates a willingness to use information gleaned by one agency to coordinate public and political pressure by other agencies against those who dissent, and to do so without regard for regulation or fourth amendment. This should give anyone pause before contributing reating with the government.

We have it in each of our hands to preserve our own privacy. Consumer technologies exist to smooth power curves and permanently shift load. Energy storage technologies able to accept and provide trickle charges within a business or home can be used to hide the details of our activities and our lives. We can use minimalist economic signals to accomplish everything hoped for of the smart grid. These technologies don’t let energy data out while they accomplish the goals of smart energy. You can adopt them, or you can allow further monitoring of every activity in your life.

CFLs and the Housing Collapse

Last week, I was discussing some new research from Wake Forest University with my favorite real estate agent. Physics professor David Carroll has developed a new technology for unbreakable lights. From popular accounts, the technology has some similarities to OLED, but is longer lasting and less expensive. A coating on a film of plastic glows. The film can be wound to produce more light. The result is a light-weight and hard to break plastic bulb that produces little heat and a lot of light while using very little energy. The inventor claims that he can produce lamps in any color. Production is likely to start in 2013.

The conversation veered, as it often does when I speak with her about technology. Real estate agents have a practicality about houses and the motivations of people who inhabit them, almost as a veteran nurse has a practicality about the human body. It may be new, but neither the real estate agent nor the nurse is ever really surprised. In either case, the follow on questions can be surprising and practical.

The agent is showing a house that has not yet been repossessed in a mortgage foreclosure, what she calls a pre-repo. She has worked with many repos and pre-repos over the last few years. The paper work required for a repo can be immense. Pre-repo’s, which are quick sales to avoid repossession, can be as bad. Sometimes one department of a bank refuses to provide the language demanded by another department in the same bank. Few chances are missed to make a difficult situation harder.

But back to lights and the agent. She observed that they might make it easier to move the difficult homes…

The agent observed that most of the pre-repos and repos had switched out all their bulbs for compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs). These lamps produce a grim bluish light that makes a house hard to sell. As a seller’s agent, one of the first things to do is to change the lamps back to incandescent, to produce a welcoming look that is not “so depressing”. People buy houses because when they feel they and their family will be happy in that house. It’s often a visceral decision. People do not feel they will be happy and healthy when they look around at a house lit only by CFLs. It is much happier to imagine a happy life in a home lit by incandescent lamps.

The agent then observed that there may be a link between mortgage foreclosures and CFL lights. Many people fight to maintain their houses, even when they owe far more than the current worth of the house. Perhaps the dim blue light helps to depress families that inhabit homes lit only by CFLs. Perhaps one is more likely give up when facing depressing lighting every day. She posited whole families, affected by something akin to seasonal affective disorder (SAD), giving up on their homes. I find it hard to contradict someone whose livelihood depends on careful observation of people and how they interact with their homes.

In any case, she faces homes that people do not want to buy. Re-lamping is often the easiest and least expensive way to prepare a house to show better. An inexpensive choice that provides a nicer quality of light would aid her to stage a house for quick sale. Incandescent bulbs are fragile, and do not take well to riding around in the car every day. With unbreakable bulbs, she could keep a case in the back of the car, and be ready to stage a house in very little time.

I don’t claim that installing CFLs leads to foreclosures—but It seems a plausible contributor. I am fascinated by the notion that better unbreakable lights may help the real estate market get moving again.

They're back

There have been signs for days, but we see a few signs most springs. On Wednesday there were a few in the driveway, but Wednesday it had turned cold. Thursday, they I just saw smaller pieces of the ones I saw the day before. There was still no sign of them this morning, when I went in to town and the farmer’s market. When I got home, though, it was certain. They’re back.

This is now a cicada swarm year in central North Carolina.

Cicada’s are the sound of the south in summer, my mind. On a hot evening in the summer, they buzz in the trees. You can hear them individually, one in that tree, two over there. So-called annual cicada are an every year event, with life cycles of two or three years, they make their appearance every summer, and it lasts all summer.

In the dog days, in the South, the evening air envelopes and caresses you, a thick sensuous mélange, part steam bath, part scents of the honeysuckle and the night blooming nicotiania. Fireflies do their mating dance, the males rising off the lawn flashing until as the females beacon them back down. Dog-day cicada’s are just a part of the enveloping warmth, not really separate, as candlelight might be part of a warm bath, separate, but inseparable when present.

These are not dog-day cicadas, today.

Periodic cicadas com earlier in the year, and they are pitiable creatures. They are slow, they are fat, they are the junk food of the avian world, and no bird can eat just one. They crawl out of the ground, and slowly up the trees, calling for a mate. That slow crawl, and that long mating song means that they cannot hide.

And yet, as slow as they are, as defenseless as they are, they are fashion plates. The have large eyes might be black or bright red., depending on the swarm. They have large iridescent wings, although I never see them fly. It’s a wonder that any survive the one or two days that they are above ground to reproduce.

What these guys do do, is they overwhelm the predators. Because the cicadas do not come every year, the birds do not, cannot, count on them. So many come at once that they overwhelm the ability of the birds to eat them. Nut trees do the same, as they have evolved for good years and bad years so some will escape the squirrels (and others). Nut trees will even communicate chemically at a distance, to align those good years and bad years; this reproduction strategy requires the whole community to participate. But good years for nut trees are not as distinctive as a good swarm of cicadas.

This afternoon, when I returned, it sounded first like the biggest motorcycle rally ever, still miles away, but revving over the hills. One year, I thought that a long threatened development along the river had started, and that dozens of caterpillar bulldozers must be re-arranging the woods. Today, after all the rough weather we have had, it sounds like a tornado, a couple miles away.

Up close, at the edge of the yard, the sound is the same as on a summer’s eve, with individuals calling from the trees. The swarm, though, now that is an eerie sound that does not let up. Yes, they’re back.