The technology promises greater efficiency because consumers and utilities can collect information on how much power a household is using at certain times of day, but some say it violates privacy rights.

VPR's Jane Lindholm talks with author Frederick Lane and photographer Jerry Swope about the social mores of photographing people in public, and the extent to which individuals can control how and where they are photographed.

We discuss the ubiquity of cameras in public spaces, and the social and legal limits of being photographed in public. Also, what a New York regulatory decision means for Entergy's plan to spin off the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant.

Cell phone technology can be used by authorities to track where people are. And the American Civil Liberties Union wants to know whether law enforcement uses the technology in Vermont.

VPR's Jane Lindholm talks with author Frederick Lane about our complicated relationship with privacy

Just how private are our individual lives?  How has our relationship with privacy changed through history?  We talk issues of privacy with author Frederick Lane.  Also, we hear from seniors who are writing their memoirs.

Proponents of a bill at the Statehouse say that some records, particularly those related to family court proceedings, could be abused if they were available online, as opposed to paper records. We look at the public's right to know and the individual's right to privacy in the era of digital court records. Also, New Hampshire's anti-tax stance might be eroding, and we hear about newly discovered letters from the Cornish, New Hampshire, painter Maxfield Parrish.

Here's an update on a story about privacy and whether thousands of people around the country including Vermonters had their private phone records handed over to the National Security Agency as part of the Bush administration's warrant-less surveillance program. Vermont and other states have sued to find out if private phone records were divulged by telecommunications companies like At&T and Verizon.