Hey Verizon, My email, tweet, blog post, reply on slashdot, all are my speech. They are what I am saying. They are -not- your speech. And when you throttle them you limit my expression. Treat my packet, his packets, her packets, their packet all the same. They are not your speech. (Ob disclaimer, I have a different service provider)

What do I pay big electric bills for? Build more power plants!

If you have too much capacity, use the extra to crack water into hydrogen to sell for all our neato hydrogen powered vehicles. /P.

Mostly they want to leave most everything else and shut down your AC. In Tulare CA (halfway between Fresno and Bakersfield in the HOT part of CA) the power company wanted to give us a discount if they could install a switch that would let them shut off the AC when they wanted. They promised they would only shut it off for an hour.

Power Company Truck, Across the street from your house, Binoculars, Clipboard, 24/7... how about now?

In before the "Well I don't have any thing to hide, why should I fear?" crowd. Look at it this way. You may thing your innocent, but it's not what you did but rather what the overactive imagination of some minor nosy official person imagines you might be up to. Extra data about you, collected easily and automatically can be misconstrued to be whatever they are looking for. Isn't that called something like "Observer bias".

You mentioned the public interest in reducing power consumption. The power company could publicize the information saying "Jim here is the power hog of the week, and look, during peek hours he used 400% of the norm! Bad Jim. Shame on you Jim"

And you would feel funny if the power company stationed a worker across the street from your house with binoculars and a clipboard 24/7. Or not?

With a dumb meter, someone has to come round to read the thing at regular intervals.Probably about the same interval as your billing cycle, say once a month. Smart meters, on the other hand, can be read as often as desired. If they were reading your smart meter once every minute they would catch on when you turned on and off your major appliances. Since each item in your house draws a slightly different current than others like it, they can guess how many are home, and what they are doing. They can also read it before and after time periods they call "peak" hours - and charge you differently for that power.

Has anyone seen the problem? Our intrepid mars colonists are just getting the knack of mars living and the ratings start to wane. uh oh no more food, no other colonists coming. They better build it so the colony is self sufficient when the first martians get there.

Until the neighboring cities see what a great success this is and institute their own tax.

First they came for the smokers, but I did not smoke. I did nothing. Then they came for the HFCS soda drinkers, but I was diabetic. I did nothing. Then they came for the diet soda drinkers, artificial sweeteners supposedly cause cancer, I did nothing. Then they came for the delicious but makes to too fat foods, I enjoyed salads, I did nothing. Then they came for the fish eaters, with stories of mercury,

Tonight's dinner: Bread and Water. (And they are looking at the bread suspiciously)

Each food taken, is liberty taken. When they decide for us, we are made children who can not decide for ourselves.

Did you mean "destruction of evidence"?

Using masses of GPUs instead of the slow cpu to do decryption work?

There are companies that demand that you do not smoke, even in your own home on off hours. Perhaps this can be extended to cellphone use. No Canadian teacher may even own a cell phone, or associate with people who do.

Unless it is well marked it will not prevent the thief from taking it. It will only from making as much as they thought they might. The damage to power networks and facilities will still happen.