Smart Grid Industry Still Full of Deceit: Silver Spring Networks Pulls a “Ralph”

The other day, we were reviewing the comments on this site and we noticed one that just didn’t seem right, in response to our post about smart meters killing bees in Irvine, CA.

It read:

Of course !  Bees die and it MUST be the smart meters !  It couldn’t have anything to do with the pesticides your neighbour uses in her garden to get rid of those pesky aphids ( or anything else ) …

We looked at the IP address of the sender and it turned out to be….

Author : Concerned Rational Citizen (IP: 74.121.22.10 , edge-gw-rwc.silverspringnet.com)
E-mail : somewhereincali@yahoo.com
Whois  : http://whois.arin.net/rest/ip/74.121.22.10

Silver Spring Networks is a Redwood City, CA based firm that designs and manufactures wireless networks for a variety of smart meter manufacturers.  They filed in July for a $150m initial public offering of stock, hoping to make money out of misery as we reported in February.

Now, we’re no stranger to smart grid industry types posing as members of the general public in order to attempt to undermine our growing movement.   William Devereaux lost his job at PG&E as Senior Director of their SmartMeter program in November of 2010 for infiltrating our website and discussion groups under an assumed name, Ralph Florea.

It’s pretty staggering that others in the industry haven’t learned their lesson from “Ralph” and continue to falsify their identities and plant comments online.   These are tech guys we’re talking about so their apparent ignorance of IP addresses is doubly impressive.  If they can’t figure out how to effectively post an anonymous comment online, how do we expect them to keep intimate details of our private lives from hackers or to keep our energy grid running smoothly?

Why are smart grid companies like Silver Spring continuing to plant comments?  Maybe it’s because the public is becoming more and more firmly entrenched against the smart grid.  In the run up to their IPO, Silver Spring is desperately trying to manufacture public support for their stupid meters because it is- for the most part- entirely lacking. (Headaches, house fires, and privacy invasion apparently rank low on the list of popular pastimes).  This is commonly called “astroturfing.”

One might ask why PG&E or SCE or Silver Spring Networks don’t have the guts to come out and publicly debate us- why they have to hide in anonymous postings on our site, instead of discussing policy issues in public like adults.  So, come on Silver Spring Networks.   If you are so confident your wireless transmitters are safe, let’s have a public debate about it.  Let’s invite the experts on both sides and have good old fashioned public hearing.

My guess is that’s not going to happen.  Light is the last thing they want to be shed on their deception, their corruption, and perhaps most worryingly, their stupidity.

Here is the contact information attached to the IP address that sent the comment- perhaps you can ask them why they are afraid of an open public debate…

http://whois.arin.net/rest/poc/SNE109-ARIN

Phone
+1-650-363-5240 (Fax)
+1-650-298-4200 (Office)
+1-650-780-4610 (Office)

Email
vince.muir@silverspringnet.com
pgurumur@gmail.com

Company
Silver Spring Networks
555 Broadway Street
Redwood City, CA 95135

This entry was posted in California, health effects, radio-frequency radiation, San Mateo County, Smart Grid. Bookmark the permalink.

7 Responses to Smart Grid Industry Still Full of Deceit: Silver Spring Networks Pulls a “Ralph”

  1. Concerned citizen says:

    Bees are dying and colonies are collapsing, mister, and THAT’S A FACT.

    Thank you for exposing this charlatan. You’d think people like this would, at the very least, be concerned about their family’s health, if nothing more, but it seems they care more about money.

  2. They’re just taking a page out of the Big Tobacco play book. It worked for Big Tobacco, so they are following in its foot steps.

    “…To this end, Hill and Knowlton’s (the PR agency retained by Big Tobacco to spread disinformation) preliminary recommendations for the work of this new agency, this TIRC (Tobacco Industry Research Committee), included intelligence gathering, advertising, laboratory research, and activities which now have come to be called “dirty tricks,” that is legal, or semi-legal attempts to smear the companies’ opponents, produce publicity or events which would not seem to originate with themselves, AND ATTEMPTS TO DISRUPT THE COMMUNICATIONS OF THEIR OPPONENTS BY SENDING THEIR OWN PEOPLE TO GIVE COUNTER ARGUMENTS IN EVERY POSSIBLE FORUM.” (parentheses and caps, mine)

    From “Smoke Screen — The Truth Behind The Tobacco Industry Cover-Up” by Philip J. Hilts

    Sound familiar?

    Yo Vince, Yo Ralph: The truth eventually came out about tobacco and it WILL prevail here, too.

  3. I’m really sorry that I’m not writing radio news headlines for California anymore when I see stuff like this.

    Wireless industry owns broadcast media via ad $$.

    Smart meters are the tech boondoggle to end all boondoggles. In fact Homelandsecuritywire.com recently posted a story about how the smart meters are not secure. So there’s that too. http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/dr20120410-industry-insiders-insufficient-security-controls-for-smart-meters

    The amount of $$ going into mad science has got to stop.

  4. Paul H says:

    I like the picture used in the article above. I found another that shows the smart meter installer wearing a hangman hood. It has the look of death.

  5. Redi Kilowatt says:

    I am glad that this site has weeded out a few of the trolls that post here, good work admin !
    But, there are different kinds of trolls, and some use their own computers and a proxy server to avoid detection.
    They could be working for the manufacturers, the utility company, have a financial interest in the radio SmartGrid, or just like to play games.
    One of these kinds of trolls is called a “concern troll”.
    They will post things that appear to be in support of the opinions of the users of the site, but it will actually be a mockery and full of false information to make the movement look like a bunch of you know whats.
    On a subject like this, (the automated radio meter project), the majority of the viewers really don’t know much of anything about this highly technical subject, there is a lot of repeating of what the concern trolls write, which is 90 percent false information.
    That means that you have fallen for the bait, I’m sorry to say.
    This goes for many other important issues facing us today, including organic foods, health insurance, chemical plants, transportation, the global corporate economy, the SMART train, high density development mandates, water wars, privatization of things that were always public, (like roads, highway infrastructure, public schools, water and sewer works, government facilities and social services) and making things that were always private (like trains and housing development) forced on to the taxpayers to pay for. They want to privatize anything that will make a profit, and make the public fund things that are money losers.
    These concern trolls are very serious about their influence that they have over most of the people.
    You may not even recognize when they “do their do”. I could give plenty of examples that I have seen on this site, but the administrators might consider it as a put down, which is not allowed here.
    All I can say is “be very wary of what you read on the internet” .

  6. Sharon says:

    finally.. i just installed it right now..

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