Court Ends Dragnet Electricity Surveillance Program in Sacramento (eff.org) 52
A California judge has shut down a decade-long surveillance program in which Sacramento's utility provider shared granular smart-meter data on 650,000 residents with police to hunt for cannabis grows. The EFF reports: The Sacramento County Superior Court ruled that the surveillance program run by the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) and police violated a state privacy statute, which bars the disclosure of residents' electrical usage data with narrow exceptions. For more than a decade, SMUD coordinated with the Sacramento Police Department and other law enforcement agencies to sift through the granular smart meter data of residents without suspicion to find evidence of cannabis growing. EFF and its co-counsel represent three petitioners in the case: the Asian American Liberation Network, Khurshid Khoja, and Alfonso Nguyen. They argued that the program created a host of privacy harms -- including criminalizing innocent people, creating menacing encounters with law enforcement, and disproportionately harming the Asian community.
The court ruled that the challenged surveillance program was not part of any traditional law enforcement investigation. Investigations happen when police try to solve particular crimes and identify particular suspects. The dragnet that turned all 650,000 SMUD customers into suspects was not an investigation. "[T]he process of making regular requests for all customer information in numerous city zip codes, in the hopes of identifying evidence that could possibly be evidence of illegal activity, without any report or other evidence to suggest that such a crime may have occurred, is not an ongoing investigation," the court ruled, finding that SMUD violated its "obligations of confidentiality" under a data privacy statute. [...]
In creating and running the dragnet surveillance program, according to the court, SMUD and police "developed a relationship beyond that of utility provider and law enforcement." Multiple times a year, the police asked SMUD to search its entire database of 650,000 customers to identify people who used a large amount of monthly electricity and to analyze granular 1-hour electrical usage data to identify residents with certain electricity "consumption patterns." SMUD passed on more than 33,000 tips about supposedly "high" usage households to police. [...] Going forward, public utilities throughout California should understand that they cannot disclose customers' electricity data to law enforcement without any "evidence to support a suspicion" that a particular crime occurred.
The court ruled that the challenged surveillance program was not part of any traditional law enforcement investigation. Investigations happen when police try to solve particular crimes and identify particular suspects. The dragnet that turned all 650,000 SMUD customers into suspects was not an investigation. "[T]he process of making regular requests for all customer information in numerous city zip codes, in the hopes of identifying evidence that could possibly be evidence of illegal activity, without any report or other evidence to suggest that such a crime may have occurred, is not an ongoing investigation," the court ruled, finding that SMUD violated its "obligations of confidentiality" under a data privacy statute. [...]
In creating and running the dragnet surveillance program, according to the court, SMUD and police "developed a relationship beyond that of utility provider and law enforcement." Multiple times a year, the police asked SMUD to search its entire database of 650,000 customers to identify people who used a large amount of monthly electricity and to analyze granular 1-hour electrical usage data to identify residents with certain electricity "consumption patterns." SMUD passed on more than 33,000 tips about supposedly "high" usage households to police. [...] Going forward, public utilities throughout California should understand that they cannot disclose customers' electricity data to law enforcement without any "evidence to support a suspicion" that a particular crime occurred.
Who thought this was a good idea? (Score:4, Interesting)
How many people did they get to harass just because they were having electricity usage, that they are paying for, which was "too high?" Some peoples' usage is going to be higher just because they work from home, enjoy their air conditioning, and maybe have a server farm or something.
Re:Who thought this was a good idea? (Score:4, Funny)
Who thought this was a good idea?
Well, pretty sure the cops thought it was a great idea.
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How many people did they get to harass just because they were having electricity usage, that they are paying for, which was "too high?" Some peoples' usage is going to be higher just because they work from home, enjoy their air conditioning, and maybe have a server farm or something.
Consider this additional California-flavored extra-special stupidity; it's currently legal for grown-ass adult homeowners to grow their own fucking weed in their own home. Even being caught with a massive grow is a misdemeanor.
So they really went out of their way to annoy the shit out of taxpayers already paying through the nose for electricity. And California wonders why it was forced to charge an exit tax.
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How many people did they get to harass just because they were having electricity usage, that they are paying for, which was "too high?" Some peoples' usage is going to be higher just because they work from home, enjoy their air conditioning, and maybe have a server farm or something.
Consider this additional California-flavored extra-special stupidity; it's currently legal for grown-ass adult homeowners to grow their own fucking weed in their own home. Even being caught with a massive grow is a misdemeanor.
So they really went out of their way to annoy the shit out of taxpayers already paying through the nose for electricity. And California wonders why it was forced to charge an exit tax.
You really went out of your way to try say something bad about California there. Strange.
Riiight. It was me going out of my way and not a senseless dragnet operation to hunt down misdemeanors at a cost of millions to taxpayers who get such a tax paying bargain in that state, right?
California hardly needs my help to look like the asshole state they are. There are now more legal weed dispensaries in the US than McDonalds. California was the first to legalize thirty fucking years ago. Go make them make it make sense. Otherwise they deserve the verbal bitch slap for grandstanding on a double s
Seems crazy (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Seems crazy (Score:4, Insightful)
We have the same exact thing with Flock ALPRs. Flock is going strong and growing. It takes time for a class of victims to be able to prove their case in court. The wheels of justice turn slowly.
Re:Seems crazy (Score:4, Interesting)
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Those old ladies are not putting all of their observations together in a database and selling access to cops.
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Oh there are people worried (Score:3, Informative)
They instantly canceled the program and shut down the cameras.
Remember that Steve Jobs would buy a brand new Mercedes every couple of months so that he didn't have to have a permanent license plate.
The rich and powerful are very concerned about having their movements tracked.
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SMUD (Sacramento Municipal Utility District) isn't a private company. It is a publicly owned, not-for-profit electric utility. It is a governmental entity that is community-owned and governed by a seven-member Board of Directors. Those Directors need to be held accountable, and not replace with worse Directors, which I fear is what may happen. I live in Sac and love SMUD, as it is reliable and far less expensive than PG&E. I am sorely disappointed in hearing about this, I certainly thought better of t
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You can't really sue an electric utility (Score:2)
Re: Seems crazy (Score:2)
lucky me (Score:2)
Good thing I'm not in SMUD territory. I use 2 sigma out of electricity, because I use a lot of electric heaters despite having a gas-fired furnace. I would have had some visits from the SS.
They showed up for my Ethereum Mine (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to mine Ethereum in my garage with nearly 200 GPUs. My electricity base load was about 13kW. After a couple of weeks, I came home from work to a gaggle of police, SWAT, DEA, and FBI agents ransacking my house and violently ripping computer hardware out of my garage.
A judge had given them a search warrant to seize "marijuana growing equipment" from my house without having any proof at all that I was growing MJ. The cops decided that racks of open-frame GPU miners were "growing equipment" and basically destroyed $50K worth of mining equipment during the confiscation and did $75K worth of damage to the house.
I sued, and a State Appellate Court Judge ruled that it was "reasonable" for the police to think that racks of computer equipment were part of a growing operation, and that they were not liable for the damage, and that I was not entitled to get my property back. I had already spent $100K on the lawsuit by that point and just didn't have any money left to appeal to the State Supreme Court.
All in all this absurdity cost me nearly half a million dollars between destroyed equipment, damaged home, lawyer fees, and lost mining revenue.
It has been 8 years since it all went down and I've never been able to get any kind of acknowledgement at all that this was a mistake. Just like "oh well too bad"
Re: They showed up for my Ethereum Mine (Score:2)
Re:They showed up for my Ethereum Mine (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re: They showed up for my Ethereum Mine (Score:2)
Just for the sake of argument, say the judge is right that it was a reasonable assumption on the part of the police.
Fine. Then simply shut off the equipment and figure out what was going on after further investigation. I donâ(TM)t get the destroy part.
Qualified immunity is a bitch (Score:1)
Crime keeps going down but we keep putting more cops on the street. People expect them to arrest people. So they're looking for guys they can hassle like yourself.
Wasted resources and money (Score:4, Interesting)
Just imagine the cost of this over the course of a decade. The utility seems to have borne the brunt of the work, having to analyze and filter this data multiple times per year. That cost would have been passed onto customers - I'm sure it's appreciated that everyone's power bill was just a bit higher to fund this fishing expedition by law enforcement.
Then of course the investigators would be tied up digging through the 33,000 "tips" this data produced. Literally, law enforcement had to review 33,000 potential customers who met this profile, checking them for warrants or other known crimes giving them some excuse to surveil or even search that residence. Pretty extreme when you think about it - and that is just to catch people growing weed of all things. Not the dangerous drugs killing people or contributing to the homeless population on so on.
Finally, the fact that this generated so many potential leads shows how stupid the concept is in general - the "profile" they were going after regarding power usage. I can think of a hundred of other things that would cause higher power usage 24/7 that has nothing to do with growing weed.
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America especially is really into punitive and revenge-based Justice. I wonder if it will start to fade if religious extremism continues to fade. It's not hard to draw a line between puritanical bullshit and wanting to do as much harm as possible to people who commit crimes or do drugs.
Re: Wasted resources and money (Score:2)
Re: Wasted resources and money (Score:2)
Re: Wasted resources and money (Score:2)
Another problem with smart meters (Score:2)
The readings are downloaded frequently and have a granularity of less than a day. So if your electricity usage suddenly drops this can be noticed.
All it takes is a sysadmin type under financial pressure (divorce, gambling debts, medical bills, ...) who needs cash. S/he will be prey to crooks who can get them to do some SQL queries, or similar, to identify usage drops and pass them to the crooks - these addresses are prolly empty as the inhabitant may be away on holiday -- a great place to send a burglar.
The
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The readings are downloaded frequently and have a granularity of less than a day.
My meter is granular down to 5 minute intervals.
Learned something today (Score:2)
disproportionately harming the Asian community.
I wasn't aware that cannabis use (drugs in particular) were a serious problem in the Asian comunity. Particularly due to the exploitation of the Chinese by the British opium trade in the 19th century, most of the people of Asian descent that I associate with steer clear of the "white man's drugs".
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disproportionately harming the Asian community.
Yeah, I'm not getting this either. That's a lot of rice cookers going ever day to spike the usage that much.
They were removing non-asian names (Score:4, Interesting)
I dug into the sources a bit. Apparently they were excluding white neighborhoods from checks, then somebody else was removing non-asian names before forwarding it for further investigation.
source [eff.org].
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Looking into the sources and tracing a bit:
The city has assessed the vast majority of the fines—more than 85 percent—against owners of Asian descent. A SMUD analyst avoided searching homes in a predominantly white neighborhood, while a police official removed non-Asian names from one of the lists generated by SMUD before forwarding the information on for further investigation.
source [eff.org].
If they actually did this, well, that's like how the NRA forced most "may issue" states to be effectively "shall issue" for various weapon permits.
When the police can't come up with a good reason for denying the black woman's permit request when she has letters from a ex-boyfriend stalker threatening to kill her, who is due to be released from prison soon, but the white doctor living in a gated community gets it first thing, there are questions to be asked.
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Probably useless today (Score:3)
During my power company career a few decades ago, this was a real thing. But that was due to the use of power-hungry HID lamps. Today, it's mainly LED lamps, which consume much less power. Small grow operations consumption data drops down into the noise level of typical home use.
Large grows can be found by walking drug dogs through your neighborhood. Or drones equiped with chemical sensors.
Cannabis farms. Meh. (Score:2)
It's about bitcoin mining these days. Shows how far behind the times the police are.
When I lived in Sac (Score:2)
I called it Sacramentoo... Too hot, too cold and too damned redneck
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I called it Sacramentoo... Too hot, too cold and too damned redneck
Half of the bay area has fled to the greater Sacramento region - it's not very redneck anymore.
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More that you know, even WITH the mass migration.
Half the bay area went somewhere... Not all to Sac
I was affected (Score:3)
Clearly something wasnt working (Score:2)
\o/ (Score:1)
This is clearly a disguised hunt for covert donut factories.
In CA, they would've SWATed Styropyro (Score:3)
VAX (Score:2)
Wasn't there a story from the late '80s or maybe the late '90s where some guy got a visit by the cops after the electric company reported unusually high electrical usage from one of their customers, and it turned out the guy wasn't growing anything but was just running a VAX?