A California judge has moved to end a longstanding law-enforcement program that monitored the near real-time smart meter use of thousands of Sacramento residents and shared some results with local police.
The program, which began in 2009, collected snapshots of residents’ electricity use every 15 minutes and transferred them to the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD), the city’s only electricity provider, multiple times a day.
Spikes in electricity use can indicate the presence of illegal activity, such as running unlicensed marijuana farms, which can be highly energy-intensive. But they can also simply indicate a lifestyle change, like buying an electric vehicle. Smart-meter fluctuations can also provide intimate details about a person’s life, such as when they get up, leave the house, or go to bed…