In this interview, Professor Glen Chase brings to light some absolutely KEY information in the areas of privacy and health regarding ‘Smart’ Meters, using primary data including information obtained under a court order. Prof. Chase interprets and makes this information highly accessible.
Once you have seen it, please re-post and forward it to your loved ones and contacts. Don’t pass this one up.
Thalia Assuras from EnergyNow.com sat down with former CIA Director James Woolsey to discuss the current state of the nation’s electric grid and its vulnerabilities. Woolsey says the federal government’s oversight of grid security is inadequate and attacks on the grid are “entirely possible”.
“No one in charge of security for the grid, whether it’s cyber or transformers or whatever. You can search forever through the federal code to try to find who that person might be.”
“And a so-called ‘Smart Grid’ that is as vulnerable as what we’ve got is not smart at all, it’s a really, really stupid grid.”
[SSM UK comment] We seem to be experiencing a surge in stories being contributed to us which warn about the unnecessary systemic vulnerabilities that a Smart [sic] Grid presents. Remedying this – if indeed possible – can only add to the burden on tax payers and bill payers. The excerpts included below are from a report from the FBI’s cyber intelligence bulletin.
~ Hacks against so-called “smart meters” over the past several years may have cost just a single U.S. electric utility hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
~ The law enforcement agency said this is the first known report of criminals compromising the hi-tech meters, and that it expects this type of fraud to spread across the country as more utilities deploy smart grid technology.
~ Spot checks found that one in ten smart meters had been modified! The company estimates the resulting losses at up to $400 million (around €300 million) per year.
~ Suitable probes are available online for around $400 and are connected to a laptop which runs software to modify the meter’s settings.
~ The software needed to carry out the hack is freely available online. The hack does not damage the smart meter hardware or require its removal.
~ The FBI warns that insiders and individuals with only a moderate level of computer knowledge are likely able to compromise meters with low-cost tools and software readily available on the Internet.
~ “The FBI assesses with medium confidence that as Smart Grid use continues to spread throughout the country, this type of fraud will also spread because of the ease of intrusion and the economic benefit to both the hacker and the electric customer,” the agency said in its bulletin.
~ “This is a well-known and common issue, one that we’ve warning people about for three years now, where some of these smart meter devices implement unencrypted memory”
~ The two researchers were slated to demo their smart meter hacking tools at the Shmoocon security conference earlier this year, but agreed to pull the presentation at the last minute at the request of several vendors and utilities that they declined to name.
[SSM UK comment] We issued a video earlier featuring David Chalk, but this press release just came in and is a must read – posted here in full with the video re-embedded via BusinessWire.com and ThePowerFilm.org. Please circulate.[/]
“100% certainty of a total catastrophic failure of entire energy grid within 3 years – worse than nuclear war”
VANCOUVER, British Columbia–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The vulnerability of the energy industry’s new wireless smart grid will inevitably lead to lights out for everyone, according to leading cyber expert David Chalk. In an online interview for an upcoming documentary film entitled ‘Take Back Your Power’ (www.ThePowerFilm.org), Chalk says the entire power grid will be at risk to being taken down by cyber attack, and if installations continue it’s only a matter of time.
“We’re in a state of crisis,” said Chalk. “The front door is open and there is no lock to be had. There is not a power meter or device on the grid that is protected from hacking – if not already infected – with some sort of trojan horse that can cause the grid to be shut down or completely annihilated.”
“One of the most amazing things that has happened to mankind in the last 100 years is the Internet. It’s given us possibility beyond our wildest imagination. But we also know the vulnerabilities that exist inside of it. And then we have the backbone, the power grid that powers our nations. Those two are coming together. And it’s the smart meter on your home or business that’s now allowing that connectivity.”
Chalk also issued a challenge to governments, media and technology producers to show him one piece of digital technology that is hack-proof.
“The computer companies that are involved, the manufacturers that are involved, bring forward a technology and I will show you that it’s penetrable,” said Chalk. “I’ll do it on national TV, I’ll do it anywhere. But I can guarantee you 100% that there is nothing out there today – nothing – that can’t be penetrated.”
Chalk’s strong words come amidst increasing reports of the smart grid’s fatal insecurities, even from the governments and energy companies who are forcing their hand with the smart program. “Every endpoint [meter] is a new potential threat vector,” according to Doug Powell, manager, SMI Security, Privacy & Safety, for Canadian utility BC Hydro.
And in an interview with EnergyNow.com, former CIA Director James Woolsey was also highly critical of energy policy makers, whose plans received multi-billion dollar funding as part of the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008. “The so-called ‘smart grid’ that is as vulnerable as what we’ve got now is not smart at all,” said Woolsey. “It’s a really, really stupid grid.”
But there’s more. In an audit released in January, the US Inspector General Gregory Friedman was also highly critical. “Without a formal risk assessment and associated mitigation strategy, threats and weaknesses may go unidentified and expose the … systems to an unacceptable level of risk,” Friedman wrote.
Energy officials knew of these weaknesses but approved plans for the projects anyway, auditors said. “The initial weaknesses had not always been fully addressed, and did not include a number of security practices commonly recommended for federal government and industry systems.”
And security is not the only technologically-based obstacle faced by smart grid proponents. In March, alarm bells were rung following current CIA Director David Patraeus’ confirmation that governments will use wireless smart appliances to spy on citizens. “Items of interest will be located, identified, monitored, and remotely controlled through technologies such as radio-frequency identification, sensor networks, tiny embedded servers, and energy harvesters,” Patraeus said at a meeting of In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital firm. He added that this will prompt a rethink of “our notions of identity and secrecy.”
With strong criticism to the smart grid now coming from many directions, energy corporations and governments now have the challenge to explain to an increasingly unapproving public why they continue to fast-track smart grid installations.
Citizen groups and organizations throughout the US, Canada and Europe have launched legal actions to stop the installation of smart meters. They cite issues such as cost increases, health risks, privacy concerns, grid vulnerability and the lack of democratic process. In Chalk’s home province of British Columbia, Citizens for Safe Technology (www.citizensforsafetechnology.org) and the BC Coalition to Stop Smart Meters are leading a growing challenge.
Options for opting out of the smart metering program have been announced in markets including California, Maine, Vermont, Louisiana, Michigan, Connecticut, Quebec, the UK and the Netherlands. In the US, several regions including the counties of Santa Cruz and Marin are enforcing outright moratoriums.
“Unless we wake up and realize what we’re doing, there is 100% certainty of total catastrophic failure of the entire power infrastructure within 3 years,” said Chalk. “This could actually be worse than a nuclear war, because it would happen everywhere. How governments and utilities are blindly merging the power grid with the Internet, and effectively without any protection, is insanity at its finest.”
The full video interview with David Chalk can be seen on www.thepowerfilm.org. The feature film documentary ‘Take Back Your Power’, which critically examines the smart grid program, will be released online this spring.
Extract: “The average user will have 736 pieces of personal information collected every day…accessible anytime in their service provider’s retention period. Most individuals will have over a million pieces of information spanning the past 45 months already in their provider’s possession. A third-party, owning nearly four years of your life… Those in the network pay to be unknowing participants in a vast study group…Your four years of information is extracted and sold without consent, contributing to the nearly $34,000 accumulated every second by the information sector.”
On the subject of the intrusive, behaviour-based profiling and targeting this data-harvesting activity drives, where services are pre-emptively limited in scope without your permission, the narrator chillingly concludes:
“The global internet becomes the personal internet – and information ceases to be information at all.”
Smart Meters and Home Area Network-sourced data would add significantly to this marketers’ panopticon.
Original story found on The Register - excerpts below:
“White-hat hackers have exposed the privacy shortcomings of smart meter technology.
“The researchers said German firm Discovergy apparently allowed information gathered by its smart meters to travel over an insecure link to its servers. The information – which could be intercepted – apparently could be interpreted to reveal not only whether or not users happened to be at home and consuming electricity at the time but even what film they were watching, based on the fingerprint of power usage. The many surprising secrets revealed by some smart meter set-ups were revealed during a presentation by researchers Dario Carluccio and Stephan Brinkhaus at the 28th Chaos Computing Congress (28c3) hacker conference in Berlin late last month.
“During the talk, entitled, Smart Hacking for Privacy (YouTube video here), the researchers explained that they came across numerous security and privacy-related issues after signing up with the smart electricity meter service supplied by Discovergy.
“Some security experts, most notably Ross Anderson, professor in security engineering at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory, have warned that smart metering introduces a “strategic vulnerability” that might be exploited to remotely switch off elements on the gas or electricity supply grid. Government ministers in the UK have downplayed such fears but the work of the German researchers raise new concerns, related to privacy.”
More than 100 Texans have joined together to petition public utilities regulators to ban so-called “smart” power meters because of the health threats they impose on the general public.
The meters are designed to interact with various advanced electronic appliances to monitor – and even manipulate – the use of power.
“Petitioners who have been subjected to forced or compelled installation of smart meters or have been exposed to RF and EMF radiation generated by smart meters fraudulently installed on neighboring homes and businesses have experienced difficulties with symptoms of insomnia, headaches, dizziness, nausea and other symptoms,” states the petition, submitted to the Public Utilities Commission of Texas by attorney Tom Cryer on behalf of Devvy Kidd, John Kidd and more than 100 others.
Cryer said his goal is to obtain a ruling on the dangers of the meters based on the health risks they pose.
“It’s like rushing thalidomide to the market … and not knowing the consequences,” he said, referring to the 1950s and 1960s use of the drug that caused major birth defects for children whose mothers used it.
… Action movie actor, martial arts champion and WND columnist Chuck Norris…asserted that complaints about ailments from the “electrosmog” are not hysteria or hype.
“Electrosmog is pollution through electromagnetic energy. It is being produced by this vast post-Edison world, in which electromagnetic fields and flows have inundated the space around us,” he wrote.
He cited the work of Dr. David Carpenter, head of the New York State Department of Health for years, who said there is evidence that radio frequency exposure at elevated levels for long periods of time raises the risk of cancer and damage to the nervous system.
Also, author Brian Sussman in “Climategate” warns readers about the Smart Grid, Smart Meters, Smart Thermostats and Energy Star appliances – which he says will allow unseen bureaucrats to regulate all of the appliances in America’s homes.
“This is not fantasy,” says Sussman, an award-winning television meteorologist, “This is reality. Smart Meters have already replaced the whirling, old-fashioned electric meters on the side of millions of houses in America – they monitor electricity usage minute-by-minute and can be read remotely. The remote-controlled Smart Thermostats are being installed as well and further enable bureaucratic control the temperature of your abode. The Smart Grid, which was mandated in the 2007 energy bill and funded with ‘stimulus’ money, is coming next. The grid will possess interactive broadband capabilities to further control all of the new-generation Energy Star appliances you will be forced to purchase – like your washer, dryer, water heater and even your flat-screen TV.”
“We, Siemens, have the technology to record it (energy consumption) every minute, second, microsecond, more or less live,” said Martin Pollock of Siemens Energy, an arm of the German engineering giant, which provides metering services.
“From that we can infer how many people are in the house, what they do, whether they’re upstairs, downstairs, do you have a dog, when do you habitually get up, when did you get up this morning, when do you have a shower: masses of private data.”
Smart Meters represent a globally-coordinated, locally-deployed Trojan Horse of our time.
Health, privacy & safety at home now stand at a precipice. Now is the time to say NO.
