<nettime> cataloging the price of privacy

[dan@geer.org]

I rather suspect that someone, somewhere keeps lists of what it
takes in dollar terms to avoid data sharing of the sort that I, at
least, consider privacy invasions, and by that I do not mean actions
that raise immediate suspicion such as buying a one-way airline
ticket with cash.  Rather I mean where there are choices that come
with implicit prices.  As an example, when a gas station advertises
"cash or credit, same low price!" what they of course mean is that
cash customers are giving the gas station attendant more money than
the credit customer and with cash neither the customer nor the
attendant is giving data to anyone else.  And so forth.

If someone on nettime is, or knows of, a keeper of such a list,
I would like to share with them my own list.  Today this was added
to mine:

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-02-06/business/chi-comed-smart-meter-fee-20140206_1_comed-meters-energy-infrastructure-modernization-act

The meat of the above is that Illinoisans must now pay $21.53 per
month to not have a device-level, usage-monitoring electric meter,
ostensibly because it costs that much to read the existing analog
meter.  I, myself, would pay such a fee without a second thought.
Not everyone can be so blithe.

--dan




#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org