Know your rights: new electrical "smart grids" raise privacy concerns

Privacy rights, once lost, can be difficult or nearly impossible to restore. In the quest to modernize and improve basic municipal systems like phone, water and electricity, user privacy must be built in on the front end. Even electrical and ordinary household devices may increasingly share more of our personal habits or information than we think - and more than we should be comfortable with.

As various counties in Hawaii consider the installation of "smart meter" and "smart grid" electricity technology, consumer privacy should be front and center. This ACLU fact sheet outlines basic privacy concerns about smart meters in Hawaii. For more information about ACLU work on digital privacy, visit http://www.aclu.org/protecting-civil-liberties-digital-age.

Ready to get involved? Planned roll out of a "smart grid" for Kauai county: