On Mon, Nov 28, 2016 at 10:21 AM, Henry Baker <[email protected]> wrote: > I (finally) saw the 1944 movie Gaslight yesterday, and a prominent plot > element was the dimming of the gas lights in a house when someone turned on > the gas lights in another room. In particular, the dimming of the gas lights > indicated that someone else was in the house, and the brightening of the gas > light indicated when that person left. Ingrid Bergman's character eventually > correlates the gas light dimming precisely with the absence of her husband -- > supposedly to his rented office to compose music, but in reality, he's > rummaging around in the attic. > > The sudden prurient interest of our utility companies (and Google) in > precisely monitoring our electrical power and our gas usage possibly be > called "gaslighting surveillance". What worries me is that our state PUC's > (Public Utility Commissions) force us all to pay for this surveillance as > part of our utility bills. > > What's worse is that these utilities want to insert the camel's nose further > into our tents by asking us to install "smart" -- aka more precise > surveillance -- thermostats in our homes, so we (and, of course, they and the > NSA/FBI/DHS via the 3rd party doctrine) can access this information via our > smart phones. Of course, having a perch on our home networks, they can > monitor a heck of a lot more than our power consumption and our home > temperature. > > God forbid we ever get another Gerald Ford or Jimmy Carter in the White > House; our "smart" thermostats will turn us into the secret energy police for > pushing our thermostats above the "recommended" temperature. > > And don't even start talking about Amazon's Echo/Alexa and Google's Home and > Apple's Siri. > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslight_%281944_film%29 > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting
No reason you cannot, or should not, install a battery buffer between you and the snoops, solar / wind power, share and tap.
