Meters that Smart: The Name is All Too Accurate

Posted on January 13, 2012 by Josh Hart

The new wireless utility meters going in around the country have been called many things: spy meters, dumb meters, even murder meters.  But we think the industry chose well when they named their new meters “smart,” a word in English indicating a sharp injury or pain. While utilities may want customers to say “Wow, that’s smart,” all too many of them are saying “Stop–that smarts!”

Indeed many people around the country are wincing in pain, grimacing as the terrible reality of pulsed microwave radiation permeating our communities becomes ‘normal.’  For every story we publish here on StopSmartMeters.Org, there are many more that go unreported. We hear about them everyday.

An 82-year-old woman living in Santa Cruz, feeling a weight on her that refused to go away, and thinking that she was about to die, wrote out her will.  Traveling to another part of California to be with her family over Christmas–a part that doesn’t have smart meters yet–she found her symptoms vanished, and she felt fine.  She put the pieces together and realized her health problems stemmed from the ‘smart’ meter in her home.  She had the meter removed and presented it to her elected officials in disgust on Tuesday of this week.

For every one who is willing to have his or her story heard publicly, there are many more who just want their health back, with no publicity, thanks. A couple in San Francisco moved out of their apartment building after the husband suffered weeks of poor sleep and headaches after five wireless meters were installed. Now they move from place to place, while trying to figure out how they can make their home livable again. His job might be on the line, if their efforts to get analog meters were made public.

One woman who has been sick from the smarting meters in her building for months can’t get her landlord to change the meters. He would do it, except for the cost to opt (even though there is no cost as of yet).

The health of an elderly couple in San Francisco took a nose-dive after the installation of their ‘smart’ meter: the husband is suffering from a progressing case of prostate cancer–which his doctor says is unusually rapid given his tests last year–and he is getting hormone and chemo treatment. The wife’s heart condition has worsened, and her weight dropped 20%. Their adult daughter would like that smarting meter off their home.

One of our members reported that while talking with a Comcast installer the other day, the installer mentioned  his company could provide a wireless modem. This launched a discussion of the health hazards of wireless radiation, and the ‘smart’ meter scourge.  His mouth agape, the installer mentioned that he had not been sleeping well at all for several months.  Thinking back, he realized it all started around the time his own smart meter went in. He had been to a doctor but tested negative for sleep apnea, and the sleep disturbances continued. Disgusted at PG&E’s greed and recklessness, the installer found out where to buy an analog meter and said he planned to remove his meter the following day.  Even for people working inside the industry, the wall of denial surrounding wireless health hazards is showing significant cracks.

Just like the Comcast installer, it’s time we all wise up and implement change.  There is no need to smart from these meters in our own homes.  These are our homes, our communities, and our lives. Our rights are on the line–basic human rights to health, safety, and privacy.

From this point on, we will no longer be using quotes around the word ‘smart’ when we refer to smart meters. We mean to say these devices cause sharp and persistent pain. The insomnia degrades health; tinnitus punctuates hearing; the headaches soak up time and energy, and keep us from enjoying our lives and our homes. The sense of intrusion, injury, and violation from smart meters indeed gives a sharp mental pain.

Get wise: no more smarting!

You can defend your analog, or change your meter, or submit a complaint!

Posted in Changing a Meter, Citizen rebellion, neighborhood organizing, PG&E, Privacy, Safety | 5 Comments

Illegal & Fatally Flawed: Proposed Opt-Out Should be Trashed

Posted on January 10, 2012 by Josh Hart

Please come to the next CPUC public meeting, this Thursday, Jan. 12th, at 9 a.m. in San Francisco. Arrive at 8:45 to sign up to speak.

We’ve said it before: CPUC President Michael Peevey’s proposed opt-out is both illegal and extortionate, an assessment shared by no less than Dennis Herrera, the City Attorney of San Francisco, who said his official comments on the proposed decision:

The City [of San Francisco] recommends that the Commission reject the PD [proposed decision] in its entirety for two reasons. First, the PD makes these findings without a hearing and without allowing the parties to this proceeding – other than PG&E – to submit any evidence. The Commission cannot make such a finding when it prevented the parties other than PG&E from making a record.

Second, the fees imposed on customers are arbitrary and appear to be intended to dissuade customers from opting-out…. The proposed fees will likely be cost-prohibitive for many PG&E customers…. The deficiencies in the PD cannot be remedied. For this reason, the City … asks the Commission to reject the PD [emphasis ours].

The CPUC, our one protection from utility abuses and profiteering, has clearly abdicated its proper role here, and according to the legal assessment above, it has taken egregious and illegal shortcuts in this particular legal proceeding. The program should be halted, and the process reframed–with proper, open, public hearings, not some stop-gap, individual-only opt-out. In addition, this proposed decision will short-circuit the right of communities of any size to act as a body to defend themselves against “smart” meters. The PD makes no provision for municipalities opting out. The CPUC continues to act as if it is ignorant of the fact that the federal government stated that “smart” meters were to be offered to residential customers, not forced on them (Federal Energy Act of 2005).

Where are we at this point? Desperate people made sick by their “smart” meters have removed them (with professional help) on their own, and paid a heavy price; thousands more suffer effects without taking direct action, understandably fearful of PG&E’s bullying tactics.  Hundreds of complaints continue to flow into SmartMeterHelp.com. PG&E is not keeping track in any way of health complaints made to it.  Only a tiny fraction of customers actually regularly use the online “smart” meter information–information that can be had by anyone by looking at any type of meter.

This is an ill-conceived, poorly researched, poisonous, and exorbitantly expensive program–a program offering customers enforced irradiation with a class 2B carcinogen that is already causing illness, invasion of privacy, and no benefits that can’t be had for a much cheaper price using other technologies. Pull the plug on the whole “smart” meter program in California, before more people are made ill, and before more good money is thrown after the bad $2.3 billion already spent–OUR money.

Meanwhile, PG&E and the other CA utilities continue to install “smart” meters with reckless speed. This apartment building (see below) recently got a bank of them put in, with no notice and no option to decline. The very strong RF radiation field around the bank is an unavoidable part of the residents’ lives–many of whom are elderly–as the meters are located in the trash room. The RF is also intense in the apartments above the meters. This same situation is found in tens of thousands of multiple-unit buildings all over the state, and the nation.

From http://youtube.com/ThisIrradiatedLife/

 

Posted in Citizen rebellion, Class Issues and Social Equality, CPUC, Democracy, Electro-Hyper-Sensitivity, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

New Film from Canada: “Take Back Your Power”

Posted on January 6, 2012 by Josh Hart

“Let us awaken and remember our creative power.” From B.C. Canada comes this powerful trailer for a new film, “Take Back Your Power.” More details at:  http://www.ThePowerFilm.org

“We only have one thing left, and that’s people power.”

People can sign up on the website above to be notified as soon as the film is released online- this is scheduled for sometime in April 2012.

Posted in Canada, Citizen rebellion | 5 Comments

Drip, Drip, Drip: Water Meters Leak RF; Cheat Customers

Posted on January 4, 2012 by Josh Hart

“Smart” water meters have slipped by without much public notice, and are being installed all over the US currently, often inside people’s homes. There are different systems and companies, but as with electric and gas ‘smart’ meters, they broadcast your usage data wirelessly, permeating your home with radio-frequency radiation and compromising your privacy.

In addition, there are billing problems, as a man in San Clemente CA recently found out: his bill jumped from $40 to $800. This 90-year-old WWII veteran dutifully checked his home for leaks, but it’s extremely difficult to explain the disappearance of two full-sized swimmingpools-worth of water.

“Smart” metering systems in general are looking increasingly insecure and unprotected from attacks: these hackers needed only two days to get into an electricity ‘smart’ meter and fake readings. According to a recent assessment, new water-metering systems “are vulnerable because of the wireless medium they use. Communications are not encrypted (largely due to higher costs) and so they are easily intercepted, faked, or even jammed.”

At the August 2011 Black Hat, where security experts and hackers explored the growing number of vulnerabilities in our computerized world, water security expert John McNabb, of Cohasset Water Dept, Cohasset MA, presented a well-researched white paper, outlining how insecure wireless water-metering systems really are. He identified several entry points for hacking and sabotage, including chemical over- and under-dosing of water supplies. This kind of water-utility hacking may have already happened in Texas.

Then there is the issue of in-home RF radiation. Some types of systems are constant RF-emitters, with the vast majority of pulses doing nothing but irradiating you: The AMR-type water meters (e.g. Neptune’s) pulse RF every 14 seconds–that’s 5,700+ pulses a day. The utility-employed reader drives around once a month with a device (see right) that receives ONE of the pulses. The other 170,000+ that go off all month long do nothing but saturate the home with radio-frequency. Here’s a video documenting the way the pulses permeate the home environment (St Paul MN).

Here is another video documenting the industrial-strength RF pulses on the Neptune water meter: up to 80 microwatts per square centimeter next to the device (=797 mW/m2 peak in photo, left). Video from SmarterMeters. One pulse for them, millions of pulses for you.

Other types, like the system San Francisco PUC has begun deploying, have pole-top or building-top receivers, and meter/transmitters tend to be located in wells in the sidewalk, adding to the public’s RF exposure. Last year ABC7 did a video piece on that system and its problems. Nonetheless, those meters continue to be installed, with no official opt-out program. Here is their RF assessment, which as usual rests its assurances of safety on sky-high FCC “guidelines.”

Lack of public input; lack of proper governmental oversight; utility priorities trumping environmental and health considerations; unexplained overbilling; and customer privacy infringement: we’ve seen all this in the context of electricity ‘smart’ meters. 

Now the same scenario is unfolding with water metering. It’s all about the cost to the utility. They save money on meter readers, and consequences to the consumer be damned.

Update 31 Jan 2012: Sheffield UK, Man wises up to smart water meter intrusion–resist’n’wrap!

Update: a video on some measurements on Israeli water smart meters, and a related blog post: http://norad4u.blogspot.com/2012/01/smart-radiating-wireless-water-meters.html:

Posted in Uncategorized | 37 Comments

Canadian Group Files Complaint Against “Smart” Meters

Posted on January 4, 2012 by Josh Hart

The British Columbia-based group, Citizens for Safe Technology, filed a complaint recently against BC Hydro’s ‘smart’ meter program there, stating that the regulatory body that should be exercising oversight and review isn’t doing its job. This is a familiar story to us in California, as we have watched our own utility commission repeatedly accept utility priorities as their own, rather than acting to protect the consumer. Press release:

Citizens’ Group Seeks Injunction
Against Smart Meter Program

A complaint has been filed under Section 47 of the Utilities Commission Act requesting an injunctive freeze on the wireless component of the Smart Meter Program without delay. This action is being taken to engage the Commission’s administrative function as a regulator of BC Hydro in accordance with the rule of law; only by operation of the rule of law can the public interest in health, security, privacy and safety be factored into Smart Meter Program decisions.

Up until now, the Commission as a regulator has been left out and, with that, any consideration of the public interest has been eliminated from BC Hydro’s decision. The action taken is about preserving the regulatory oversight and democratic process we uphold under the rule of law in British Columbia. BC Hydro cannot be allowed to act with impunity, without regard to the public interest, on a matter that raises serious concerns with respect to human health, environmental integrity, individual privacy and civil liberties.

The Clean Energy Act purports to excuse BC Hydro from having to obtain a BCUC issued Certificate of “public convenience and necessity” but not with respect to the wireless and snooping components of the Smart Meter Program. The Commission is requested to issue relief on an urgent and interim basis, without hearing and without delay, so as to effectively freeze any and all activity being carried out by BC Hydro in contravention of section 45(1) of the Utilities Commission Act.  Any delay in the issuance of the relief sought will allow BC Hydro to continue with unauthorized expenditures associated with the Unauthorized Extensions. This Action is taken to preserve and give weight to the public interest with regard to the deployment of the Smart Meter Program in British Columbia.

Media Contacts

David M. Aaron, Barrister & Solicitor
Tel: 250.551.6840  Fax: 866.685.7376

Sharon Noble, CST Legal Liaison,  – dsnoble@shaw.ca, Tel: (619)628-1947

Una St.Clair, CST Executive Director,  – una@citizensforsafetechnology.org

Industry Media on this: http://www.smartmeters.com/the-news/2915-canadian-advocacy-group-follows-injunction-suit.html

Posted in Canada, Citizen rebellion, Class Issues and Social Equality, CPUC, Electro-Hyper-Sensitivity, Environmental Concerns, Federal Government, legal issues, Privacy, Safety, Uncategorized | 6 Comments