Pirate Electrician Supplied Power To 1,500 Homes

fridaynightsmoke writes "A former electrical engineer for utility EDF has been prosecuted for illegally supplying power to some 1,500 homes in north London. Derek Brown, 45, was arrested in 2008 after being seen tampering with the electric grid in a manhole. He specialized in connecting separate supplies to houses that were split into apartments. One landlord involved, Haresh Parmar, was jailed for 9 months for stealing £30,000 worth of electricity for 22 of his apartments. Brown's assets will be seized and he has been sentenced to 8 months suspended, and 150 hours community service."

Comments

British Power Supply

[Cylix]

Can someone explain how the mains circuit is supplied.

TFA was so light on details its very difficult to understand what he did. I'm not sure how you can actually illegally tap into the power grid without someone noticing. Here an inspector literally reads the meter or in some cases a digital meter supplies information automatically. In fact, my gas is apparently wireless and merely requires someone to drive by to meter the usage. It would seem like something that would be very difficult to subvert in a suburban environment.

Re:British Power Supply

[davester666]

Um, he can do all kinds of things.

Just tap into power and run it to a new building. Meter reader isn't expecting to go to the building to read the meter, so nothing is missed.

Or run electricity into building, through a box that looks like a meter, only gives out a faulty reading.

As for wireless and/or internet-connected meters, it wouldn't surprise me if the company isn't particularly on the clue train and may not, say, have a very good system in place for authenticating the data from the device [so you could replicate the signal and put out whatever reading you want]. However, the company probably does require a semi-regular physical meter reading, to check that the physical meter has the same reading as the broadcast one, and the system doesn't appear to be tampered with].

Electricity may be more complicated to wire up correctly to bypass the meter [so x% goes through the meter and y% goes around the meter], but gas and water are really straightforward to do the plumbing and to get a reasonable percentage through the meter, and people have been really imaginative in disguising/hiding the modifications.

Re:British Power Supply

[Qubit]

if you live near high voltage cables run cables beneath to tap of electricity by induction. People have been prosecuted in the UK for doing this.

How in the world do you prosecute someone for using an induction loop?

I mean, sure, you could prosecute them for trespass or something if you move your stuff onto their property/airspace, but if it's all on your own land, it's just EM waves flowing through the air. If the land owner has to put up with the radiation they didn't ask for, who is to say that they can't use it to induce a current?

Anyhow, I figure you might be trollin' seeing as how you'd have to get really close to get any measurable power via induction, but it is an interesting question in any case...

Re:British Power Supply

[Chrisq]

Or run electricity into building, through a box that looks like a meter, only gives out a faulty reading.

The article talks about buildings that are split into apartments. In the UK sometimes the landlord pays the electric company, and then has private meters for each apartment - all going through the main meter. (This is much less common than it was because there are strict limits on markup and additional charges. Most new flats now have electric company meters). The safest way to fiddle the bill would be to have one or two flats going through the main meter and the rest using an illegal collection. The landlord of course collects money from all the tenants!

Re:British Power Supply

[Anonymous Coward]

You can even see this in judgements we would now disagree with.

The famous "end of slavery" judgement in England is very narrowly written, it holds that slavery is a repugnant institution, and so could only exist in England if it was the law, then it says the law doesn't provide for slavery in England, and so the plaintiff, who is in England, is not a slave and may go free.

But it carefully says nothing about slavery outside England. There were in practice essentially no slaves in England, which is why this chap (brought there from a colony and unwilling to return) was chosen as a test case. Everything was paid for by anti-slavery advocates. So the intention was to secure a judgement that slavery as a whole was illegal, and the judge did not do that. He didn't want to cause chaos by spontaneously freeing huge numbers of slaves.

Campaigners still called this an end to slavery, but England continued to operate slave ships, and to control colonies whose commercial viability depended on slavery. The only thing that had changed was a man who found himself in England could be sure he wasn't a slave - though as a servant he might be little better off. It would take many more years before English rulers instructed their colonies to cease buying new slaves and grant their existing slaves freedom.

Re:Libertarian fantasy wank.

[KillAllNazis]

What version of money would this be that you cannot buy power with?

Re:Libertarian fantasy wank.

[Archangel Michael]

You obviously are more inclined to want more regulation until every facet of your life if regimented, say like China or North Korea.

No, there is no flaw in your slippery slope argument /sarcasm.

The only thing you fail to mention is that the "libertarian" examples you provided aren't libertarian at all. They are anarchistic. And if that is your view of LIBERTY than you shouldn't comment on ideals you have no concept of.

The function of government is to secure the liberties of the people. Most of the third world countries that are often touted by the leftwing anti liberty crowd (such as yourself), is that they DO NOT HAVE a functioning governance.

And while you're at it, why not admit that corporations are nothing more than collectives, like unions? When you realize that collectivization of politics leads to tyranny, then you'll be able to realize that you've been an idiot, and the end of your leftwing fantasy wank.

I'm not against "unions" or "corporations", I'm just against collectives of any sort infringing upon the liberties of anyone, even if I'm affected directly. Because even if I'm not personally affected by anti libertarian tyrants, I will be, eventually.