Do me a favour and put "opt-out" in google and see what comes back. It will seem that we get to opt-in or opt-out of almost everything. There will also be many "opt-out warriors" who spend their days fighting for you to have a choice in seemingly everything, yet there are still many things where there is no opt-in or opt-out option and I'm going to discuss the dangers of the opt-out culture.
Firstly lets talk about the things where there aren't an opt-in or opt-out:
- Education: there are choices about how and where, but we as a society accept that our children must be educated to a minimum standard and it is indeed illegal if you don't send your child to school. All well and good. Doubt there are too many who will argue about that, ignoring for a moment those who argue a lot about the content of the curriculum and frequently whether it contains too much or too little religion of one form or another, or too much or too little information regarding sex.
- Water fluoridation: Despite this being a hugely controversial issue, for some bizarre reason, many years ago, you don't hear much about it today and 5.8 million people receive water that has add fluoride added to bring it up to 1mg per litre.
- Taxes: Again, massively controversial in terms of how much we should pay, however you struggle to find anyone who seriously says (as in we would take them seriously) we should be no taxes. Stuff needs to get paid for and taxes are the best we've got to ensure the payment of them is, sort-of, reasonably distributed.
- Laws: We have them, you don't get to opt-out. You can protest, you can run for office and try and get them changed or you can challenge them in the courts, but it is generally accepted that a society needs laws to function and you don't get to pick and choose which ones apply to you.
If I were to characterise the above, then I would tend to put them together under the title of things that make our society function to a minimum acceptable level. So these are all part of the social contract that means we all get basic services, like health and education, as well that we fund the functions of the state that should keep us alive, enforce some commonly understood rules and provide some basic opportunities for us all as well as a safety net that either does too much or doesn't work as well as it should do depending on your political viewpoint.
So why am I going on about this.
The Climate Change Act has placed a target on the UK of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. There are many who would argue that target is not ambitious enough. Unfortunately I've spent enough time looking at this to wonder whether it is possible and whether industry and government is going to be bold enough and ambitious enough in it's action to achieve this, ignoring for a moment the contribution necessary by the public.
So this is where I link this back to opt-in and opt-out.
Due to some of the, frankly absurd, press coverage of the rollout of smart meters, it was necessary for there to be a choice over whether you got a smart meter installed. The brigade who proclaim they will never install such a "listening" device in their houses, usually tweeting their outrage on a mobile phone, with batteries containing cobalt probably mined using child labour, which voluntarily monitors their location, interests, political views, purchases, holidays and pictures of their lunch. However I digress..
Because of this the view was to make it optional and sell the benefits so as not to derail the entire programme. To be clear for any budding eco-warriors out there, one of the best things you can individually do to contribute to the fight against Climate Change is to install a smart meter and get smarter about your energy usage.
But this then goes further. Because the point of the smart meter rollout was a stepping stone towards the creation of a smart grid. This includes the reform of the settlement service upon which the operation of the grid depends and obtaining far more detailed information for load shaping, increased visibility of consumption at the local grid level for network operators, which then leads to data enabling the reinforcement and better management of the grid to enable the rollout of electric vehicle charging points and smart charging...the list goes on and on.
But currently consumers have an opt-out where they don't have to share this data if they don't want to.
However since this fundamental change to the system is but the first step in the transformation of the energy sector to a digitised, data-driven and decentralised then how can we have an opt-out.
Are we saying that we have an opt-out for the Climate Change Act?
An opt-out for decarbonisation?
If we going to do that then what about an opt-out for the move to all electric vehicles and the banning of the internal combustion engine?
How can you have laws that commits the UK to meeting its targets for tackling the climate change emergency if at the same time you have an opt-out for the stepping stones that give us the only opportunity to meet the goals to which we're now legally committed?
Of course whenever you discuss these things, particularly when it comes to the sharing of data that has been classified as being covered by GDPR, then many will point to that legislation, which is something I wholeheartedly agree with, and say that GDPR demands an opt-out. When in fact it does no such thing.
GDPR demands that there is a legal basis for any data you gather, process and store.
GDPR demands that the rights of the data subject are upheld.
GDPR doesn't demand that you must have an opt-in or opt-out. That is in fact only one of the options available.
If we take the example of data from payment cards, then most people don't consider that when you swipe or tap that card then your data, including your payment card and transaction information, is passed to a number of parties who gather, process and store this information, not only to process your payment, but also for counter-fraud, non-repudiation, audit trails and financial reporting.
You have given consent to your bank and to the merchant with whom you have swiped/tapped your card, however what about the others? Such as the merchant's bank and the card processor.
They have the right to do this because of implicit consent.
The security and privacy of your data, which lets be fair is much more sensitive than your half-hourly energy consumption data, is ensured by the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard or PCI-DSS.
So why not an Consumer Energy Consumption Data Security Standard or CEC-DSS?
Now perhaps it's just the fact that this has been going on for so long now, that we've just become used to it. Or the fact that most of us probably have the attitude of "it works so who cares". However it's easier to be off the grid that it is to not have a payment card.
In fact we rarely talk about your payment card as technology these days, yet smart meters definitely have that tag and, as Douglas Adams said, "technology is the name we have for things that don't work properly yet".
However, if we don't grow-up and wise-up soon about the need for our energy grid to be smarter and the need for our data to drive the innovation and invention needed to achieve the 2050 decarbonisation targets we could find us opting-out of an atmosphere to breath, un-flooded land to build on and a planet with resources left for us to use.
However I'll be alright, as I live on a boat.
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