A decade-long electricity surveillance program in Sacramento, California, has been shut down by a court ruling. The program involved the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) sharing smart meter data of 650,000 residents with the police, ostensibly to identify cannabis growing operations. The court found that this practice violated a state privacy statute that protects the confidentiality of residents' electrical usage data.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), along with co-counsel, represented petitioners who argued that the program infringed on privacy rights, risked wrongly accusing innocent individuals, led to potentially intimidating encounters with law enforcement, and disproportionately affected the Asian community. The court agreed, stating that the surveillance program was not a legitimate law enforcement investigation as it treated all 650,000 SMUD customers as potential suspects without any specific evidence of wrongdoing.
The ruling highlighted that SMUD and the police had established an inappropriate relationship, exceeding the bounds of a utility provider and law enforcement agency. The police regularly requested SMUD to search its entire customer database, identifying individuals with high electricity consumption and analysing hourly usage patterns. This resulted in over 33,000 tips being passed on to the police regarding households with supposedly high electricity usage. The court's decision makes it clear that public utilities in California cannot disclose customer electricity data to law enforcement without evidence to support a suspicion of a specific crime.
Artículos relacionados de LaRebelión:
- Data Centres Driving Up Americas Electricity Prices
- Industrial Gas Giants Secret Electricity Superusers Exposed
Artículo generado mediante LaRebelionBOT
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario