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Ask Slashdot: Are Smart Meters Safe?
An anonymous reader writes "There is a lot of controversy and a big hullabaloo about Southern California Edison and various other utilities around the country installing smart meters at residential homes. Various action groups claim that these smart meters transmit an unsafe amount of RF and that they are an invasion of privacy. The information out there seems rather spotty and inconsistent — what do you engineers out there think? Are these things potentially harmful? Are they an invasion of privacy?"
Serious question: If you wrap your smart meter in tinfoil (or for purposes of this argument) lead, what happens?
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
So, I used to write server software for one of these companies, and I'd say the biggest concern is the corners they're cutting in order to get a product to market. Having an internet aware electricity grid is a terrible, terrible idea, especially when the leaders of these organizations are businessmen/women that don't understand the underpinnings of technology. It isn't a matter of if hackers will eventually be able to monitor, track, and use this information against customers (e.g. Hitting homes that have significant drops in usage while they're out of town) it's when. Furthermore, several of these meters have a remote IP enabled shutoff - can you image the havoc that could be wreaked when the encryption and authentication software in these meters is outstripped by new technologies? This is all worst case scenario stuff, and it isn't like these companies aren't always doing their due diligence; it's just that I feel social engineering and/or actual hacking makes this seem like an inevitable outcome.
Not really. My power company gives me 15 minute snapshots and I've been able to determine all sorts of stuff. That hour long spike there-that's when I was cooking an early dinner.
That 20 minute spike-THAT's right around the time I heard that noise and went outside to see what it was, leaving the damn door open and causing the AC to kick on.
Some of that only means something to me.
BUT, a person looking at my snapshots can EASILY figure out when I get up, when I go to sleep, my days off, etc. My house has a fairly consistent 'idle' when I'm asleep or at work.
Just look for a 1 hour period of activity following 6-10 hours of idle, which precedes another idle period. You've got about what time I get up and when I leave for the day.
Look for a few hours or activity following a period of inactivity and you have when I get home. Yes, depending on how similar the periods are, you might have trouble figuring out which is me getting up and ready for work vs which is me getting home. Some more observing might help figure out what the idle period is.
If you can average my kwh usage, you can get close to figuring out if I'm single or not.
You can work out when there's guests. Higher power spikes might indicate water heater usage which implies additional laundry or (more likely) shower usage. Now you can start to get closer to figuring out if I'm less single then before.
Yes, the data ia a bit vague, but that's nothing that can't be cleaned up with more granular info and some better data on appliance usage. Just do some searches of who built my house and you can figure out whether it's likely I have gas or electric appliances.
The best part is all of this can be mined and viewed right from someone's desk. No need to stalk me to figure all of this out.
I see huge privacy implications in all of this.
Well, I do grow orchids indoors as a hobby, and have several large grow lamps and fluorescent arrays that draw over 800 watt-hours for 17 hours per day (in the summer, anyway, they need shorter hours of daylight in the winter.) And there's no mistaking the glow emanating from the basement windows.
I've never had so much as a knock on the door from a city or police official or power company representative asking what I'm growing under all the lights.
John