With the idea of Smart Meters comes the potential threat of an invasion of privacy. Smart Meters are, in general terms, classified as a surveillance device – its job being to accurately monitor your usage of electricity.
Unlike old meters, these new devices have the ability to differentiate between what is being used. They monitor everything! Old meters would monitor general usage and just classify it as electricity usage. These new meters will be able to tell what exactly is using electricity.
Are you cooking with your electric stove? Are you charging your phone? Has your smart refrigerator had the temperature dropped? Are you currently sitting watching TV?
They know your routine and what you own!
While the purpose of the meters themselves is to just monitor your electricity usage, they are also collecting additional data which could be potentially used against you.
It only takes a few months of this for the system to understand your routine and pattern. This could in turn be used by outsiders for nefarious interests.
As reported in the Guardian, besides knowing your usage of electricity, hackers will be able to log in and see what devices you have in your house – to see if you have anything of value.
Anyone can gain control of your house!
Smart Meters can be paired with any Smart Device to help stream line your life by letting you control your electricity usage through these devices. Are you coming home and want to turn the air conditioning on? The connection of all these devices lets you do so (ex: Nest).
Most of these devices are not impervious to attack as they are currently encrypted, and those which do have a layer of protection only use an A5 Algorithm, which is known to be hack-able. Many of the encryption choices they use come from around 2003 and are, currently, easy to break through. Creators of the meters pick and choose what features they want to protect their system.
As ex-CIA Director James Woolsey stated in an interview, we can “call our homes with our cellphones to turn down our air conditioning on a hot day, which is great, but that also means that a hacker in Shanghai can do the same.”
Security experts have released basic programs that individuals can use to test the security of their devices, but through these tests, various companies have found that Smart Meters lack anything to stop malicious attacks.
You could be held hostage with your bill!
With hacking in and being able to see what you own, they can in turn set your bill to whatever they like – this would be known as billing fraud. Like those blackmail emails (ex: the recent one asking for money or a release of questionable viewing habits and personal images) asking for money otherwise they will release information, such things could happen with your Meters, except while many of the emails are just phishing, this threat could be very real.
Smart Meters as Bombs?!
On top of everything else, Smart Meters have the ability to cause fires. Most of the fires that have occurred near and around the site have not been widely directly ‘connected’ to the meter. However, in Ontario, an exploding meter caused reason for concern. Hacking was not clearly implicated in that, however the ability for such is not out of grasp.
- Encryption keys are generally only 6 characters (extremely weak)
- To pair with a device, no authentication is required – anyone can pair
- Simple code to let it work with lower power devices – allowing easy access
- Specific coding to let an administrator override and access password (admin being electrical company).
Electric company can turn you off when they want and you have no say.
During certain times of the year, energy usage spikes. The grids cannot handle the pressure and sometimes mass blackouts occur. With the new Smart Meters, electric companies will be able to pick and choose which devices in your house they can turn off. Turning off the power to the house directly may be possible (although currently untested), they will have the ability to control a device that is taking too much power and deemed essential, thus infiltrating your home. If they can do it, who else can?
What if you have an electric device for health reasons and they turn it off? That could be fatal.
Electrical company gets hacked, so do you.
Before, an individual would need to come to your house and check your electric usage. Now, everyone is connected. If an individual gets access to the mainframe with your electric company, they can access all the data for everyone as it’s all recorded there. One would hope they had proper protection, but if someone got past, all the information they need is there. When your electric company goes down, or is held ‘hostage’ so are all of the users paired with the system.
As always, buyer beware.
Please Note:
With no attempt to be a definitive or a complete source of information here are some of the issues and considerations that residents should know regarding smarts meters. Citizens4USR are not experts and aim to raise awareness, share information and keep readers alerted to the issues. Information will be added as available and additionally readers are invited to comment and share information – which will appear in comments and relevant information will be added to the post. There is a lot of information out there, and some of it comes from sources that might not be as factual or unbiased as they could. Wherever possible articles and information have been sourced aiming for impartial, factual based information. As always – please be aware.
Smart meter should be banned by every town by every state. I think this should not be the responsibility of individuals to be opting out because of the exposure from surrounding homes and the amount of problems and issues of creates within a town. It should be completely banned entirely from the towns and the states. Personally should be banned worldwide extremely dangerous.
Unfortunately it won’t happen. Where there is money to be made products are created and sold. Thankfully we have the right to opt out.