IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Spring 2014 - 50

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mart meters have become
a matter of concern for
many populations, although the technology is
as always politically neutral. The focus on electricity rather
than all metered services, water, gas,
and electricity is one aspect of this
public concern.
The heavy emphasis on Smart
Grids, overall energy supply stability [1], and the extension of control
into the home by power generators,
along with poor communications
by governments and power generators in a range of countries, have
led to an increasingly well founded
series of problems:
1) Symmetries in power between
consumer and supplier,
2) Privacy issues [2], [3],
3) Data ownership issues.
The article examines some of
the user-side issues in context, and

how that "success" is defined. Possibly this will only become clear
once water, gas, and electricity are
all integrated with home automation and with the information and
regulatory systems that tie them all
together. The last element, electricity, may well prove to be the most
critical social impacts.
The current perception is that
the end user is the last and least
significant step in the chain of
important decisions and regulatory
considerations. This perception
will be severely undermined once
the public more widely realizes
how units within homes interact
with the overall operation of smart
grids as a whole. Acute system
security vulnerabilities are opened
up by these bidirectional information and control flows. A specialist
supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) company in Israel

End user consumers need to play a
far great role in the development,
deployment, and utilization of smart
meters in their homes.
the imbalances between industry
and consumer, how these have been
addressed to date, and ways forward.

Smart Meter Impacts
Issues of government intervention, integration of the various and
varied initial energy and metering
policies, and privacy and data ownership issues differ substantially in
how social impacts of electricity
smart meters are addressed [4]. It
remains to be seen which politicotechnical models will prove to be
the more successful in this important emergent area of the Internet of
Things,1 and it remains to be seen
1

The IoT European Research Cluster provides a
useful focal point for this, with their annuallyupdated document at http://www.internet-ofthings-research.eu/pdf/IoT_Cluster_Strategic_
Research_Agenda_2011.pdf

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reports that as a result of security
audits of water and power systems
with smart meters:
"The command and control
nature of the Smart Grid data
network poses a difficult challenge from a security perspective. No longer are the nodes
of the control network located
in secured server rooms or
located inside a fenced cabinet with an alarm and/or
video surveillance system.
The nodes, or meters in this
case, are located in the homes
and businesses away from the
public eye and with almost no
possibility for the utility to
restrict access and detect tampering events. In other words -
the end points of this microlevel command and control

network are a sitting duck.
The utility must assume that
these devices will be investigated, audited and tampered
with. Imagine what an interesting case study such a meter
poses to any engineering student or aspiring computer
hacker who wants to pave his
way to fame at the expense
of the utility. The ease and
discreteness of access to the
Smart Grid nodes, along with
the traditional lack of security state of affairs common
in control/SCADA systems
field protocols is a dangerous
mix" [5].
As they become an integral part
of emergent smart grid systems,
end-user consumers need to play
a far greater role in the development, deployment, and utilization
of smart meters in their homes
and small businesses. The command and control philosophy so far
apparent in government and power
generator approaches is inadequate to address these emergent
issues. When it is noted that this
is simply the first of many "Internet of Things" deployments, but
with heightened sensitivities even
beyond the time/space focus of
Location Based Services [6], it will
be difficult to manage politically if
a greater level of participation and
information and regulatory power
is to be accorded to civil society
and to the end users themselves.

Context
The civil society aspects of smart
electricity (and indeed water and
gas) meters have been inadequately
managed by many governments
around the world, as these issues
have been seen largely as a tool
to save on energy generation and
smart grid investment, and have
largely neglected the education
and engagement of civil society.
The price for this neglect is now
being paid in terms of various levels of social resistance. Industries

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

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SPRING 2014
http://www.internet-of http://www.things-research.eu/pdf/IoT_Cluster_Strategic_
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Spring 2014
