A few days ago, the Valley News published a New Hampshire Bulletin article about a proposed energy usage database (“Advocates seek energy usage data,” June 1). While the proposed database was described as a positive good for the town, I disagree.
April Salas is Hanover’s sustainability director. Speaking in favor of the database, Salas spoke of the difficulty that third parties encounter when they have tried to obtain records of energy usage in Hanover. She compared sharing energy data to “fighting for your medical records … something that I own and have a right to.”
However, this database is not about people seeing their own records. In the proposed database, current energy providers would have to provide information about their customers to various third parties, including their potential rivals. Indeed, the plan for the database was described this way: “Third-party providers could then use this information to offer targeted energy services — like managing energy usage from a smartphone, a guaranteed bill, or more accurate pricing information.”
I don’t think that a business should be compelled to share its customer information.
Meanwhile, looking at the customer herself, data privacy can be a major issue. This is especially true with “smart meter” data, which can be extensive. In some court cases, smart meter data has been considered the result of a “warrantless” search, but it was allowed as a “reasonable” search because the data is not widely shared. For example, when a police department wants a customer’s utility usage information, the police have to subpoena that information. With the proposed database, what level of customer-usage detail will be provided to third-party vendors to enable their “targeted” energy service offers?
I think utility customer usage information should be protected from third parties, even if the third parties are wrapped in mantles of green.
MEREDITH ANGWIN
Wilder
The writer is the author of Shorting the Grid: The Hidden Fragility of Our Electric Grid.
In his first speech to the Senate, Georgia Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, said, “A vote is a kind of prayer — to God.” He meant that voting rights are not just a political issue. They’re also a faith issue — a test of whether citizens see the image of God in each other, and thus the respect and dignity of a fair and free vote.
The Republican Party, having decided that the only way to win elections is by making it much harder for Black, brown and young people to vote, is attacking the sacredness of the vote. Unable to attract diverse new voters by embracing diversity, the GOP has resorted to passing voter suppression laws.
Many white evangelicals, and other white Christians, have embraced this assault, not only on democracy but also on the image of God in each of us, which gives inherent value, worth and dignity to us all regardless of race or background. In many ways, the future of American democracy hinges on whether those who profess the Christian faith, especially white evangelicals, will continue to be complicit in these racialized attacks on the worth of their fellow citizens and, thus, also on our democracy.
Continued complicity in such thinly veiled white supremacy will surely erode the number of Americans attracted to Christianity and make evangelicals an even smaller minority. But these blatant attacks offer a chance to break free from the idols of whiteness and embrace the truth that Christ loved and welcomed all people — and so should we.
The Rev. Steve Gehlert
West Newbury
The authors of the U.S. Constitution designed the Senate as a “check” on the House. In 1787-1789, only the House of Representatives was elected directly by the people. At that time, even though senators were elected directly by state legislatures, those, in their turn, were also elected directly by the people.
The people then qualified to vote included property-owning white males. Since then, the right to vote has been expanded several times, typically by constitutional amendment. Included today are people of color, women, those who don’t own property and those over the age of 18. Also, the 17th Amendment made the election of senators a matter of direct popular vote. The ideal of inclusivity — political equality – has expanded and, to date, has prevailed.
Nowhere in the Constitution is there mention of the filibuster. For most of America’s history, it was applied to occasional instances of legislation. During the 1950s and 1960s, it was used increasingly by Southern senators to resist the ending of segregation and to suppress the votes of Black Americans. Since 2010, the Republican Party, under the leadership of Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, has made it a tool to enforce minority rule.
In my opinion, this anti-democratic, essentially racist device must not continue to stand in the way of ensuring the voting rights of all American citizens, particularly its citizens of color. The enactment of the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act is a matter that should transcend merely partisan considerations. These bills have already passed the House. The filibuster should not be used to prevent a vote on this matter in the Senate.
Sens. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia should know that the “minority rights” for which their support of the filibuster stands are those of what is becoming a white minority in an increasingly diverse democracy. This minority also includes those who are willing to surrender government by the people through lawful, that is, constitutional, process to an unworthy radical-right authoritarianism. Where do they stand?
BORIS G. von YORK
Springfield, Vt.