I get to thinking about these things, in part because I get paid to sometimes, and in part because I've seen very directly the kinds of ways Big Brother tries to infiltrate your digital life. Most homes in the US now already have or are going to get soon a smart electric meter. It has some RF capabilities, or even BPL (now that is potentially scary, my fellow simians). If I worked inside of a three letter agency, and I had a budget and a mission to "find terrorists", I think I'd be finding some creative ways to leverage that nearly total coverage of the American power grid.
If you're talking about what I think you are, most cities already have that in place for their water meter system. The RFD system we want works off an antenna on the watertower, and would allow me to pull up every meter in town from a laptop in my office. I could not only track the month's use as of that moment but even what is moving through the line at that particular moment. The cheaper (more likely for us) version requires you to drive through the neighborhoods with the laptop to pick up the signal. Pretty cool. I can't really see how you could use it against people though, unless there's some remote meter shut off capability with it I don't know about. Then again, what I know about RFD would not fill a thimble.
In a military senero take out your power meter and buy pass it. Jumper cables will work but are not recomended for long term use. That is if the grid is stil live.
I spent all summer supporting the power company that were replacing all the electrical meters with the smart meters,they will have the ability to do rolling blackouts if the capacity does not meet the demand for power.
and that is why a Backup Power Plan is just one of those Prep's that you can't ignore, or it will bite you in the .... Well you get the idea... .... YMMV....
link to 07-19-2011 thread for additional info/discussion You can find historical discussion on Survival Monkey here
Well not only the legit purposes, but it is a device mounted up against your house with a generous power supply and ability to communicate in a bidirectional fashion with a management system. Hmmm.
You really don't have anything to worry about, unless you are worried about someone knowing you're home, and what you're doing with your power and when. Bet on the utilities selling this info to marketers. Bet more on the marketers treating the data as somewhat less than private.
Well, I am worried. A little info here, a little info there, your phone call history, credit card history, store loyalty card purchase history. Mix it with some profiling software and now we have an issue. Every little piece of seemingly useless information, once aggregated can be used for good or ill. And usually NOT for YOUR benefit. Just Sayin.
Yep...which is why I don't own a cell phone, my one CC is used for very occasional online purchases, and I have a wallet full of store loyalty cards all in the name "Johnnie Cash" with equally bogus address/info on the apps.
