TN Note:Â The Technocrats who create the smart meter technology do not want public scrutiny. What is there to hide? If their security is so bad that they don’t want anyone to know how to ‘break in’, then they could easily fix the holes and make it more secure. However, if what they want to hide are built-in capabilities to monitor and analyze home appliances and other in-home devices, then their protest makes good sense.
 The sysadmin-activist at the center of a bizarre legal battle over a smart meter network in Seattle, Washington, says he never expected a simple records request to turn into a lawsuit.
Phil Mocek told The Register that when he asked Seattle City Light, a public power utility, to provide details on the designs and rollout of its smart power meter grid, he was simply hoping to find out what security safeguards the city and hardware providers Landis+Gyr and Sensus USA planned to use.
“We all assume these meters simply monitor the amount of energy usage in the home,” Mocek explained. “But they monitor it in real time in ways that other meters did not.”
The worry, Mocek said, is that the city may have been convinced by the suppliers to install a network with poor security protections or insecure protocols that could place citizens at risk of having their energy-use remotely spied on or their personal information stolen.
To find out more about the meters that the city was planning to install and the security measures in place to protect those meters, Mocek filed a request for documents under the Washington Public Records Act (PRA) via the MuckRock investigations website.
This, says Mocek, is where things started to get real odd.
The free-software advocate said that after an email exchange with Seattle City Light officials, he obtained some of the records and uploaded them to the web – only to be told that the smart meter suppliers objected to the release of the information on the grounds that the unredacted documents would disclose their trade secrets and open the public to terrorist attacks on their infrastructure.
Mocek was given a mix of unredacted and redacted documents by the city, the meter makers complained, whereas he should only have received and published files they had censored. Seattle officials said they were not skilled enough to know for sure which parts to redact, so left it to the suppliers to edit the files – yet, unredacted information managed to make its way into Mocek’s hands and onto the internet.
Landis+Gyr and Sensus promptly sued the city, Mocek and Muckrock, and filed for an injunction: ultimately, the suppliers wanted the documents taken down, and the unredacted copies banned from public view.
On Thursday, a temporary restraining order was granted by the King County Superior Court in Washington – and Muckrock founder Michael Morisy confirmed the unredacted documents have been taken down pending the outcome of the case.
Is the electrical device on the side of each home and business actually just a “Meter” or a converter/generator? Is the device we call a “Meter” converting the low power from the utility pole into usable direct current electricity? If the conversion/generation is the reality then all the monies paid to the utility companies are a scam and rip-off.
No blueprints – no investigation into the real working of the ” Smart Meter” – but one can purchase, take apart and analyze a analog “Meter” and the “Meter” fantasy propaganda fully falls apart
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Is the electrical device on the side of each home and business actually just a “Meter” or a converter/generator? Is the device we call a “Meter” converting the low power from the utility pole into usable direct current electricity? If the conversion/generation is the reality then all the monies paid to the utility companies are a scam and rip-off.
No blueprints – no investigation into the real working of the ” Smart Meter” – but one can purchase, take apart and analyze a analog “Meter” and the “Meter” fantasy propaganda fully falls apart