40 NGOs lodge complaint over pro-industry bias in European Commission assessment of EMF

Posted on April 8, 2015 by admin

From Strålskyddsstiftelsen / Swedish Radiation Protection Foundation
March 15, 2015
shutterstock_54123526

 
Over 40 NGOs lodge a complaint to the European Ombudsman

The recent assessment of Electromagnetic Field health risks by a European Commission expert group1 is largely biased towards a pro-industrial scientific viewpoint, according to over 40 NGOs. The organisations claim that the SCENIHR experts omitted the contradictory conclusions of a substantial part of the scientific community, and that some of the experts have close links to the telecom or electrical industry. – This might explain why they discarded all alarming studies on brain tumours and other diseases, says Mona Nilsson, chair of the Swedish Radiation Protection Foundation. A new balanced assessment is urgently needed if we don’t want to risk Public Health by policies based on incomplete and biased data.

An unbalanced expert group

In a field where alarming scientific evidence is accumulating and the scientific controversy is sharp, the European Commission has appointed an expert group dominated by scientists who are well known for their disbelief in EMF health risks. (See Encl. 3) Many of them have links to the controversial organisation ICNIRP.2 The SCENIHR sub-group on epidemiology offers a striking example of the lack of impartiality and pluralism. Headed by the notorious no-risk profile Joachim Schüz, it discarded or excluded all studies linking mobile phone use to head tumours (see encl. 1). This was done despite the objections from a group member (see Encl.4), and in complete contradiction to the conclusion of many fellow scientists, some expressing deep concern for Public Health as the Bioinitiative Group for instance. The unbalanced group was appointed without regard to earlier calls for transparent, impartial and pluralist expert assessment from different stakeholders. (See ex. in Encl. 5)

In addition there are noteworthy conflicts of interest in the SCENHIR EMF expert group. Several members have intimate relations to the concerned industry like Theodoros Samaras (ex-consultant, Vodafone), Mats-Olof Mattsson, ICNIRP (Telia Sonera‘s scientific council), Kjell Hansson-Mild (Telia Sonera‘s scientific council), Zenon Sienkiewicz, ICNIRP (consultant, Japan EMF Information Center emanating from Japan Electrical Safety & Environment Technology Laboratories and the Japan Electric Association) and Anssi Auvinen, ICNIRP (repeatedly funded by MMF, the Mobile Manufacturers’ Forum)3. The industry benefits tremendously from the no-risk conclusion as it postpones costly regulations and lowers the risks of liability claims.

NGO demands and suggestions

Considering the decisive impact the SCENIHR assessment will have on Public Health policies and standards, and the recent recommendations4 of the European Ombudsman to obtain more balanced expert groups with less conflicts of interests, concerned NGOs will lodge a complaint to the Ombudsman and address a petition to the European Commission. EU citizens and decision-makers will not receive correct information about EMF health risks unless expert assessments are impartial and made in the general interest. The NGOs therefore demand:

  1.  An investigation by the European Ombudsman of the appointment and composition of the SCENIHR EMF steering and working groups, including questions of pluralism, transparency, corporate influence, NGO participation, and the integration of suggestions from the public consultation.
  2.  An annulment of the SCENIHR report on EMF health risks.
  3. The appointment of a new balanced, transparent and contradictory expert group without conflicts of interest by an unbiased steering group.
  4. A new balanced and independent assessment.
  5.  The establishment of a permanent stakeholder committee at DG SANCO, where NGO viewpoints can be truly pronounced and considered in the decision process on EMF policy, legislation, research and expert assessment.  

Contact persons: Mona Nilsson, Swedish radiation protection foundation mona@stralskyddsstiftelsen.se +468-560 512 13

Alasdair Philips, Powerwatch, UK. SKYPE: amphil

REFERENCES

1 The report Potential health effects of exposure to electromagnetic fields (EMF) was adopted January 27, 2015 by the EC Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks (SCENIHR) It assessed the recent research (2009-2013) on EMF health risks related to radiofrequency fields from wireless technologies and low frequency fields.

2 ICNIRP is the association that formulated the guidelines behind most current EMF exposure standards. It exclusively takes thermal effects into consideration (warming of tissue) and explicitly excludes exposure to wireless devices exceeding 6 minutes as well as possible long-term effects like cancer and neurodegenerative diseases. Its non-protective approach and closed structure give ICNIRP features of a front group for corporate and military interests, according to EMF related NGOs. ICNIRP experts have a huge influence in international and national standard setting committees, including the WHO EMF-Project. See e.g. Critic of ICNIRP http://www.chronicexposure.org/limitsICNIRP.html and
The Procrustean Approach http://www.emfacts.com/papers/

3 Samaras: http://ec.europa.eu/health/scientific_committees/emerging/docs/doi_scenihr_samaras_en.pdf

Mattsson: Declaration of interests

Hansson-Mild: Declaration of interests

Sienkiewicz: Declaration of interests

Auvinen: Declaration of interests

4 The recommandations following the European Ombudsman’s own-initiative inquiry concerning the composition of EC expert groups. 

ENCLOSURES

Enclosure 1: SCENIHR: a biased assessment of EMF health risks – the example of head tumours

Enclosure 2: SCENIHR: a biased assessment of EMF health risks – the example of EHS soon available

Enclosure 3: SCENIHR members’ history (intellectual and financial bias).

Enclosure 4: Letter from SCENIHR member Kjell Hansson-Mild on assessment bias.

Enclosure 5: IEMFA’s letter to DG Sanco,”Call for Transparent, Impartial and Pluralist Expert Assessment on health risks of non‐ionizing electromagnetic fields (EMF), Nov 14, 2011

http://www.stralskyddsstiftelsen.se/2015/03/bias-in-the-assessment-of-electromagnetic-fields-emf/

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German govt. expert warns Smart Meters are access points to electricity grid, hacking the grid from private homes possible

Posted on April 2, 2015 by admin

“Introducing smart meters means you install access points to the electricity grid in private homes,” said Reinhard Gruenwald, an energy expert at the Office of Technology Assessment at the German Bundestag, a scientific institution advising German lawmakers. “You can’t physically protect those. If criminals are smart enough, they may be able to manipulate them.”

Attacks on grids could cause major catastrophes globally, according to Nicholas Hanlon, project manager for critical infrastructure security at the Center for Security Policy.

“Clean water, hospitals, transportation, communications, and food storage, all depend on the electrical grid,” he said. “If the grid is down for a few days it’s no big deal. But imagine social order after two weeks.”

Imagine one or more nuclear power plant catastrophes if back-up generators don’t immediately operate at full power following a grid shutdown.

Analog electromechanical meters are not access points to the electricity grid . Why are political leaders endangering our entire society?

From Bloomberg, April 1, 2015

Turkey’s 10-Hour Blackout Shows Threat to World Power Grids

by , , and

A massive power failure that crippled life in Turkey for almost 10 hours on Tuesday highlights the threats facing electricity grids worldwide.

Turkey’s most extensive power failure in 15 years, which left people stranded in elevators and traffic snarled, wasn’t the result of a lack of electricity. The prime minister said all possible causes — including a cyber-attack — were being investigated.

While the source of the problem is still unknown, recent revelations that a 2008 oil pipeline explosion in Turkey was orchestrated via computer and the high-profile hacking last year on Sony Pictures Entertainment demonstrate the increasing ability to penetrate systems. For power grids, technology being added to make them more reliable and productive is also giving attackers an entry point into vital infrastructure.

“Every country, including the U.S., will be looking at it to see what the vulnerabilities were and learn some lessons about protection,” said Kit Konolige, a New York-based utility analyst for Bloomberg. “An electric grid is a complex system and it’s hard to ensure that it’s defended everywhere.”

Several foreign governments have hacked into U.S. energy, water and fuel distribution systems and might damage essential services, the National Security Agency said in November. A report by California-based cybersecurity company SentinelOne predicts that such attacks will disrupt U.S. electricity in 2015.

Targeting Industry

“More and more attacks are targeting the industrial control systems that run the production networks of critical infrastructure, stealing data and causing damage,” said David Emm, a principal researcher at Moscow-based security company Kaspersky Lab Inc., which advises governments and businesses.

All power use was previously measured by mechanical meters, which were inspected and read by a utility worker. Now, utilities are turning to smart meters, which communicate live data to customers and the utility company. This opens up the systems to hackers.

Turkey’s regional power grids have been investing to transform substations, transformers and circuit-breakers to smart devices since they were privatized starting in 2008, said Ugur Yuksel, coordinator of the nation’s Electricity Distributors’ Association, which governs all 21 grids in Turkey.

Plant Failures

“The more you use telecommunication systems and Internet, the more exposed you are to cyber-attack,” Yuksel said by phone from Ankara on Wednesday, without speculating on the cause of the Turkish blackout. “The best way to minimize the threat of cyber-attacks on grids is to start using closed networks that employ Internet-based communication selectively.”

A domino effect of power plant failures that began on western Turkey’s Aegean coast caused blackouts all the way to the eastern part of the country, Energy Minister Taner Yildiz said at a conference in Istanbul on Thursday, according to state-run news Anadolu Agency. “We cannot say the reason why there were failures and a cyber-attack is not ruled out.”

Turkey’s national grid operated by the state power transmission company Turkiye Elektrik Iletim AS could be vulnerable to “decoding of encrypted information,” Yildiz said, without elaborating.

Data Transmission

Supervisory systems used by operators are open to threats of cyber-attacks because they employ telecommunication systems, Yuksel said. In Turkey, like in many other countries, grid operators use fiber optic cabling networks and mobile services for data transmission, he said.

It is not only hostile states that target these critical infrastructures at the heart of the economy, but also “hacktivists, hooligans and criminals,” according to Kaspersky Lab. Research shows that most companies don’t invest enough in security technology — systems are often outdated and only a third of the employees pay attention to cybersafety, said Kaspersky Lab’s Vyacheslav Borilin.

Germany, Europe’s biggest energy market, is in the midst of a push to expand and modernize its grid to integrate more renewable power. Smart meters installed in homes across Europe can communicate with a power supplier or the grid operator.

Protecting Meters

“Introducing smart meters means you install access points to the electricity grid in private homes,” said Reinhard Gruenwald, an energy expert at the Office of Technology Assessment at the German Bundestag, a scientific institution advising German lawmakers. “You can’t physically protect those. If criminals are smart enough, they may be able to manipulate them.”

Attacks on grids could cause major catastrophes globally, according to Nicholas Hanlon, project manager for critical infrastructure security at the Center for Security Policy.

“Clean water, hospitals, transportation, communications, and food storage, all depend on the electrical grid,” he said. “If the grid is down for a few days it’s no big deal. But imagine social order after two weeks.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-01/turkish-blackout-shows-world-power-grids-under-threat

Reprinted under Fair Use Rules.

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British report: Smart Meters are a potential catastrophic government IT disaster

Posted on March 30, 2015 by admin

Press Release from Institute of Directors (IoD)
March 27, 2015

IoD calls for Smart Meters scheme to be ‘halted, altered or scrapped’ to avoid ‘unjustified, over-engineered and expensive mistake’

The Government’s rollout of Smart Meters, digital energy meters designed to provide real-time usage statistics, should be “halted, altered or scrapped” to avoid a potentially catastrophic government IT disaster, the Institute of Directors warns today.

In a major new report entitled “Not too clever: will Smart Meters be the next Government IT disaster?” the IoD brands the £11bn scheme, the largest government IT project in history, “unwanted by consumers, devoid of credibility and mind-blowingly expensive”. The business group calls on an incoming government to review the project and “consider a fresh start”.

The Smart Meter programme, which has the hugely ambitious target of installing 100 million new pieces of kit in homes and business by 2020, was initiated by Ed Miliband as energy secretary in 2008, following an EU Directive, and confirmed by the Coalition Agreement in 2010.  The report’s author, Dan Lewis, Senior Infrastructure Advisor at the IoD, calls the political consensus “a conspiracy of silence among politicians in thrall to big ideas and even bigger budgets”.

Lewis continues:

“The professed aims of the Smart Meter programme are laudable, and we all recognise the benefits of reducing consumption and increasing energy awareness. But there is little credible evidence to suggest that a scheme of this size and complexity will achieve those goals.”

The IoD report highlights a number of key concerns:

  • Despite the EU Directive, 11 nations have ruled out electricity smart meters and only 5 are pushing ahead with the 2020 target for gas meters. In contrast, as is so often is the case, the UK has gold-plated the Directive.
  • The government refuses to publish any of the reports on the programme by the Major Projects Authority.
  • The cost-benefit analysis conducted by the Department for Energy and Climate Change is so heavily redacted as to be almost unreadable.
  • The Smart Meter network would be vulnerable to cyber-attack and disruption.
  • Introducing time-of-day pricing to shift consumer demand will only work with price increases that are not politically realistic. Retail consumers really can’t change their energy consumption that much.

The report places the rollout of Smart Meters within the context of previous large-scale IT fiascos, including the infamous NHS National Programme for IT, the eBorders Programme and the BBC’s disastrous Digital Media Initiative.  Furthermore, a recent survey shows that 80 per cent of IoD members rate the ability of government to manage large IT projects as “poor or very poor”.

Dan Lewis adds:

“This scheme is far from smart. The dishonourable roll call of government IT projects that have haemorrhaged vast amounts of taxpayers’ money to no discernible effect needs no further additions. Consumers will not forgive the already unpopular energy companies for a costly programme which fails to deliver and ends up making them poorer. Without a change of direction, whoever wins the general election is at risk of overseeing a spectacular failure in the next parliament. They would be well-advised to consider a fresh start.

“Consumers do not want the meters, they have proved a costly mistake in countries where they have been rolled out, and the Government is withholding key details about their costs and benefits. This makes for a programme which is devoid of credibility, over-engineered and mind-blowingly expensive. Perhaps the only reason why the cost and ambition of this project has not become a national scandal already is because of a conspiracy of silence among politicians in thrall to big ideas and even bigger budgets.”

A key area of concern outlined in the report is that the technology behind the scheme is untested and some parts will likely be obsolete by the scheduled switch-on date of 2020. The new wireless standard, ZigBee, which is being developed for Smart Meters is complex and expensive compared to the better-known Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. Each property will also get an in home display, but there is scant evidence of consumer demand. British Gas found that only 60% of customers looked at their displays even once a month a year after installation.

Recommendations

An incoming government should consider the following changes:

  • Stop the smart gas meter deployment – only a handful of EU nations are planning to deploy gas smart meters by 2020. This would save billions of pounds.
  • Remove the requirement for an in home display – expected to cost £800m in total, the displays will be out of date in a few years. Far better to connect smart meters to people’s phones, tablets and PCs
  • Limit the rollout to homes with high energy usage – those who use more than 5,100 kWh of electricity, and 23,000 kWh of gas a year have much more to gain. This would reduce the scale of the rollout by 80%.
  • Abandon attempts to stretch  the rollout to tower blocks – the most technically challenging aspect of the project with the lowest potential returns. This would remove seven million homes from the scheme.
  • Make the programme genuinely voluntary – offered to customers at their own expense, not subsidised by all.
  • Abandon the whole programme and develop a smart phone app instead – look into developing a smart app which would convert a photo of their current mechanical meter into a meaningful number for the suppliers. This would cost tens of thousands of pounds rather than billions.

Lewis added:

“We know that an incoming government will be under intense financial pressure, having to find further cuts to public spending. This does not fit well with increasing energy bills for a project that has such unrealistic targets, such large costs and such uncertain benefits.”

Read the full report here.

ENDS

Contacts for further comments or to arrange interviews:

Christian May
Head of Communications and Campaigns
Institute of Directors, 116 Pall Mall, London SW1Y 5ED
020 7451 3263
07908 358 728
Christian.May@iod.com

Edwin Morgan
Head of Media Relations
Institute of Directors, 116 Pall Mall, London SW1Y 5ED
020 7451 3392
07814 386 243
Edwin.Morgan@iod.com

http://www.iod.com/influencing/press-office/press-releases/smart-meters-a-government-it-disaster-waiting-to-happen

About IoD (from their website)

At the Institute of Directors, we have been supporting businesses and the people who run them since 1903. As the UK’s longest running organisation for professional leaders, we are dedicated to supporting our members, encouraging entrepreneurial activity and promoting responsible business practice for the benefit of the business community and society as a whole.

Our philosophy is to support, represent and set standards for directors

We are your representative and voice in business, no matter what your company size. We support our 34,500 members through 48 regional branches across the UK, allowing us to be influential at a local level, as well as nationally. Our members are some of the most skilled and prominent leaders in the UK, from start-up entrepreneurs to directors in the public sector and CEOs of multinational organisations.

We represent your point of view

As an independent association of business leaders, our objective is to make sure your views are taken into account when the government is reviewing policy, legislation or seeking the views of the wider business community.

http://www.iod.com/about-the-iod

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Lobbyists go after Attorneys General; why some investigations go nowhere or don’t happen at all

Posted on March 29, 2015 by admin

From the New York Times, October 28, 2015
By Eric Lipton
NYT series: Courting Favor
The Peoples’ Lawyers

Emails detail interactions between the office of Attorney General Pam Bondi of Florida and a law firm trying to sway her.

When the executives who distribute 5-Hour Energy, the popular caffeinated drinks, learned that attorneys general in more than 30 states were investigating allegations of deceptive advertising – a serious financial threat to the company – they moved quickly to shut the investigations down, one state at a time.

But success did not come in court or at a negotiating table.

Instead, it came at the opulent Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel in California, with its panoramic ocean views, where more than a dozen state attorneys general had gathered last year for cocktails, dinners and fund-raisers organized by the Democratic Attorneys General Association. A lawyer for 5-Hour Energy roamed the event, setting her sights on Attorney General Chris Koster of Missouri, whose office was one of those investigating the company.

“My client just received notification that Missouri is on this,” the lawyer, , told him.

Ms. Kalani’s firm, Dickstein Shapiro, had courted the attorney general at dinners and conferences and with thousands of dollars in campaign contributions. Mr. Koster told Ms. Kalani that he was unaware of the investigation, and he reached for his phone and called his office. By the end of the weekend, he had ordered his staff to pull out of the inquiry, a clear victory for 5-Hour Energy.

Courting Favor

Articles in this series examine the explosion in lobbying of state attorneys general by corporate interests and the millions in campaign donations they now provide.

The quick reversal, confirmed by Mr. Koster and Ms. Kalani, was part of a pattern of successful lobbying of Mr. Koster by the law firm on behalf of clients like Pfizer and AT&T – and evidence of a largely hidden dynamic at work in state attorneys general offices across the country.

Attorneys general are now the object of aggressive pursuit by lobbyists and lawyers who use campaign contributions, personal appeals at lavish corporate-sponsored conferences and other means to push them to drop investigations, change policies, negotiate favorable settlements or pressure federal regulators, an investigation by The New York Times has found.

A robust industry of lobbyists and lawyers has blossomed as attorneys general have joined to conduct multistate investigations and pushed into areas as diverse as securities fraud and Internet crimes.

But unlike the lobbying rules covering other elected officials, there are few revolving-door restrictions or disclosure requirements governing state attorneys general, who serve as “the people’s lawyers” by protecting consumers and individual citizens.

A result is that the routine lobbying and deal-making occur largely out of view. But the extent of the cause and effect is laid bare in The Times’s review of more than 6,000 emails obtained through open records laws in more than two dozen states, interviews with dozens of participants in cases and attendance at several conferences where corporate representatives had easy access to attorneys general.

Often, the corporate representative is a former colleague. Four months after leaving office as chief deputy attorney general in Washington State, Brian T. Moran wrote to his replacement on behalf of a client, T-Mobile, which was pressing federal officials to prevent competitors from grabbing too much of the available wireless spectrum.

“As promised when we met the A.G. last week, I am attaching a draft letter for Bob to consider circulating to the other states,” he wrote late last year, referring to the attorney general, Bob Ferguson.

A short while later, Mr. Moran wrote again to his replacement, David Horn. “Dave: Anything you can tell me about that letter?” he said.

“Working on it sir,” came the answer. “Stay tuned.” By January, the letter was issued by the attorney general largely as drafted by the industry lawyers.

The exchange was not unusual. Emails obtained from more than 20 states reveal a level of lobbying by representatives of private interests that had been more typical with lawmakers than with attorneys general.

°The current and increasing level of the lobbying of attorneys general creates, at the minimum, the appearance of undue influence, and is therefore unseemly,” said James E. Tierney, a former attorney general of Maine, who now runs a program at Columbia University that studies state attorneys general. “It is undermining the credibility of the office of attorney general.”

Continue reading →

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Lloyd’s of London excludes liability coverage for RF/EMF claims

Posted on March 18, 2015 by admin

Credit to Sharon Noble, Director, Coalition to Stop Smart Meters in British Columbia, for bringing this information to the public. 

Lloyd’s of London excludes any liability coverage for claims,

“Directly or indirectly arising out of, resulting from or contributed to by electromagnetic fields, electromagnetic radiation, electromagnetism, radio waves or noise.” (Exclusion 32)

This information is from CFC Underwriting Limited, which is a Lloyd’s of London underwriter (page 12-13 of policy document, page 13-14 of pdf), and was posted by Citizens for Safe Technology:

[This] is a recent renewal policy which, as of Feb. 7, 2015, excludes any coverage associated with exposure to non-ionizing radiation. In response to clarification, this response was received on Feb. 18, 2015 from CFC Underwriting LTD, London, UK agent for Lloyd’s:

“‘The Electromagnetic Fields Exclusion (Exclusion 32) is a General Insurance Exclusion and is applied across the market as standard. The purpose of the exclusion is to exclude cover for illnesses caused by continuous long-term non-ionising radiation exposure i.e. through mobile phone usage.”
http://www.citizensforsafetechnology.org/Lloyds-of-London-excludes-coverage-for-RFEMR-claims,2,4168

The policy document is here: http://emrabc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/InsuranceAEWordingCanadav17Feb2015.pdf
Also http://www.citizensforsafetechnology.org/uploads/scribd/Insurance%20AE%20Wording%20Canada%20v1%207%20Feb%202015.pdf

From the Lloyd’s of London policy:

“Exclusions (starting on Page 6 of policy, Page 7 of pdf):

We will not

a) make any payment on your behalf for any claim, or
b) incur any costs and expenses, or
c) reimburse you for any loss, damage, legal expenses, fees or costs sustained by you, or
d) pay any medical expenses:
…
32. Electromagnetic fields (General Insurance Exclusions –Page 7 of policy):

directly or indirectly arising out of, resulting from or contributed to by electromagnetic fields, electromagnetic radiation, electromagnetism, radio waves or noise.”

This would include the microwave radiation and electromagnetic radiation emitted from Smart Meters (AMR, AMI, PLC), from Home Area Network devices and appliances (including AC and thermostats), from Wi-Fi transmitters, from wireless devices in schools, offices, and homes, and from wireless sensors and wireless-connected fire alarms.

 “This means that the Province (that is we, the taxpayer) will be held liable for claims from teachers and parents of children suffering biological effects from wifi in schools, from homeowners exposed to RF from mandated smart meters on homes, and from employees forced to use cell phones or exposed to wifi at work. Lawsuits in other countries have resulted in huge payments already, and it is only a matter of time before similar lawsuits are filed and won in Canada.

“Potentially those who allow such devices, after having been fully informed about the dangers, could be held liable for negligence, and directors’ insurance may not provide financial protection. Directors’ insurance applies when people are performing their duties “in good faith”. It is hard to argue they are acting “in good faith” after having been warned by true scientific experts and by a well-respected insurer.

“Consider yourself notified once again that you could be held legally responsible for the decisions you have made.”

Yours truly,
Sharon Noble
Director, Coalition to Stop Smart Meters in British Columbia Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

The full letter with policy document is here: http://www.citizensforsafetechnology.org/Lloyds-of-London-excludes-coverage-for-RFEMR-claims,2,4168

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Report ranks electricity meters for risk to health, privacy, cybersecurity

Posted on March 18, 2015 by admin

From Electromagnetic Health.org, March 16, 2015

This March 15, 2015 report ranking electricity meters on their risk to health, privacy and cyber security is from Ronald M. Powell, Ph.D. Dr. Powell is a retired career U.S. Government scientist who holds a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Harvard University. During his Government career, he worked for the Executive Office of the President, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Ranking Electricity Meters for Risk to Health, Privacy, and Cyber Security

Introduction

The manufacturers of electricity meters offer a wide variety of models. And many of these models are available with a dozen or so options, leading to an enormous number of possible combinations. These meters have capabilities beyond what is required to measure the electricity consumed for the purpose of issuing a monthly bill. Unfortunately, the new capabilities present a host of risks to health, to privacy, and to cyber security, as has been widely discussed elsewhere. But, briefly –

• The risks to health arise primarily from the fact that many electricity meters communicate wirelessly with the electric power companies. They transmit radiofrequency radiation, at microwave frequencies, day and night, every day of the year, forever. That radiation travels through homes and businesses readily, and penetrates the unborn, the children, and the adults alike, disrupting health. Every transmitting meter in a community irradiates everyone in that community. So does every community-based transmitter/receiver that the electric power companies have erected to communicate wirelessly with those meters.

• The risks to privacy arise from the fact that many of the meters capture and transmit very highly time-resolved information about electricity consumption. That detailed information can reveal much about the activities taking place inside the homes and the businesses, sufficient, for example, to reveal when no one is there.

• The risks to cyber security arise, in part, from the fact that some types of meters can accept incoming wireless commands that may come from nefarious sources. Many of those meters can respond to wireless commands to shut off the electrical power to a home or a business entirely, or to accept new software programming. That new programming can alter the functions of the meters and can do so invisibly to the owners of the homes and the businesses.

Download the Full Report Here (PDF)

Ranking Electricity Meters for Risk – A Summary

graphThe table summarizes the risk rankings of electricity meters, based on a detailed analysis in a longer companion document.1 “5” is the highest risk. Blank is the lowest risk. Capital letters mark meters with similar, but not necessarily identical, risk rankings. The priorities among the three types of risk addressed are these:

Health: The meters are arranged in descending order by Risk to Health, which the author believes to be the single most important risk factor.

Privacy: The meters with the same Risk to Health are arranged in descending order by Risk to Privacy.

Cyber Security: The meters with the same Risk to Health and the same Risk to Privacy are arranged in descending order by Risk to Cyber Security.

The Wireless Smart Meter poses the highest risk in all three categories of risk. In contrast, the Traditional Analog Meter poses the lowest risk in all three categories of risk. This meter is also called:

• Traditional Analog Mechanical Meter
• Traditional Analog Electromechanical Meter
• Traditional Analog Mechanical Meter with No Wireless Communications Capability
• Traditional Analog Mechanical Meter with No Electronic Circuitry.

Download This Graph Here

Report: Ranking Electricity Meters for Risk to Health, Privacy, and Cyber Security

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March 17, U.S. Senate hearing on electric grid innovations

Posted on March 16, 2015 by admin

There is no representation of the public at this hearing. and therefore, the committee will not receive information about the myriad problems and costs of Smart Meters and the Smart Grid.

NARUC will be on the panel (see previous posts on NARUC) and EPRI. This is an industry and “captured” agency presentation to Congress, not a fact-finding hearing. The committee members and their website links are here. to contact them. Elizabeth Warren is on this committee: http://www.energy.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/members

Mar 17 2015, 10 AM EDT (Eastern Daylight Time)

The State of Technological Innovation Related to the Electric Grid

Full Committee Hearing

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will hold a hearing to evaluate the state of technological innovation related to the electric grid.

The hearing will take place Tuesday, March 17, at 10 a.m. in room 366 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

The hearing will be webcast live here on the energy panel’s website.

Opening Remarks

  • Chairman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska)

Witness Panel 1

  • Ms. Lisa Barton
    Executive Vice President, AEP Transmission
    American Electric and Power
  • The Honorable Lisa Edgar
    Ms. Lisa Edgar Commissioner, Florida Public Service Commission
    President, National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners
  • Dr. Michael Howard Ph.D., P.E.
    President and CEO
    Electric Power Research Institute
  • Dr. Peter Littlewood
    Director
    Argonne National Laboratory
  • Dr. Jeff Taft
    Chief Architect for Electric Grid Transformations
    Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Permalink: http://www.energy.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2015/3/evaluating-technological-innovation-in-the-electric-grid

Related Files

http://www.energy.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/hearings-and-business-meetings?ID=1348cae4-e8dd-448a-b111-6357cf9af113

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New tools for the industry to get your personal energy data

Posted on March 14, 2015 by admin

It is ridiculously easy to see and analyze someone’s energy data now.

https://smartmeterharm.org/2014/07/09/privacy-invasion-data-mining-and-surveillance-with-smart-meters-part-1/
https://smartmeterharm.org/2014/07/09/privacy-invasion-data-mining-and-surveillance-with-smart-meters-part-2/
https://smartmeterharm.org/2015/02/03/digital-electronic-internet-of-thingsiot-and-smart-grid-technologies-to-fully-eviscerate-privacy/

However, the states and the industry have publicly stated that data is “aggregated” – all the information clumped together and impossible to disentangle. Because of that, they say, people’s privacy is protected.

Now, the industry has overcome even their contrived hurdle with disaggregation – creating tools that break down the data even more easily.

The article has a photo of a needle in haystack. Privacy? No longer available with Smart Meters and the Smart Grid.

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/eeme-goes-public-with-energy-disaggregation-te st-results

Startup Goes Public With Its Energy Disaggregation Results

EEme is hoping that large-scale tests shared publicly will help demystify this emerging technology.

by Jeff St. John
March 13, 2015

One of the biggest questions facing the providers of energy disaggregation technology is how to prove that it works as advertised. Then there’s the inevitable follow-up question — how well does it work compared to the competition?

Over the past few years, we’ve been covering companies like Bidgely, PlotWatt, Smappee, Neurio (formerly Energy Aware), Navetas, Belkin, Intel, and others offering technology to disaggregate whole-home energy data into specific breakouts of air conditioning, water heating, appliances and other typical building electricity loads. But without large-scale, standardized testing methods, it’s hard for would-be users of the technology to know whether they’re getting what they’ve paid for.

Enes Hosgor, CEO and founder of EEme, says that his company wants to change that. Last week, the Carnegie Mellon University spinout released results from what may be the biggest disaggregation technology test out there — a comparison of the results turned out by EEme’s algorithms against the circuit-level, real-time data being collected from 264 homes that are part of the Austin, Texas-based Pecan Street research consortium.

EEme disaggregated a year’s worth of 15-minute smart meter interval data, and was able to achieve about 70 percent accuracy in its estimates of air conditioning, water heater, clothes dryer and dishwasher energy use, compared to the granular data Pecan Street was pulling into its supercomputers. That’s on par with what other disaggregation technologies have been able to get out of 15-minute whole-home meter reads, according to tests from the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) that we covered in late 2013.

But it’s also a lot more comprehensive in terms of the data it’s being compared against, he said. Other disaggregation tests have been limited to mock homes set up in labs, or at most, a couple of dozen homes equipped with expensive and hard-to-maintain circuit-by-circuit sensors. And importantly, those test results haven’t yet been made freely available to the public, as EEme is now offering to do, he said.

“If you don’t have that insight in public, you cannot have a benchmark, a reference point, to move the entire knowledge base forward,” Hosgor said in an interview last week. “And if you don’t know the accuracy reference point, you cannot put that in the context for use cases,” which can range from load forecasting, demand response and energy efficiency measurement and verification for utilities, to appliance-by-appliance energy use and cost breakdowns for homeowners.

To be fair to the other energy disaggregation companies out there, EEme isn’t revealing the algorithms and approaches it uses. “Everything we’ve built at Carnegie Mellon is our own — and we don’t share how we do things, just like Bidgely and PlotWatt don’t share how they do things,” he said. But at least it’s giving out the results from what’s most likely the largest, and thus most statistically significant, test of this kind of technology out there today, he said.

Sharing the wealth from a treasure trove of home energy data

Pecan Street offers a unique resource on this front. No other entity, to our knowledge, has sensored and monitored so many homes at such fine detail for as long as it has. Even so, EEme isn’t the first energy disaggregation technology vendor to use this resource as a test bed.

“We have done projects like this for several companies, including EEme,” Bert Haskell, Pecan Street’s CTO, told me in an interview this week. “It’s just the first to publicly release its results.”

Haskell declined to name the other companies that have used Pecan Street’s enormous residential energy database to test their disaggregation technologies. But he did say that they include at least three Fortune 100 companies — and while he didn’t mention it, Intel publicly announced in 2012 that it was testing its disaggregation tech at Pecan Street.

Pecan Street has been releasing some of its own results on this front, like its Sol app, which monitors time-stamped energy data from solar PV-equipped homes to catch problems with their solar generation ranging from dirty panels to faulty electronics. It’s also making its data available to universities and researchers through its WikiEnergy platform.

“I’m glad that EEme has decided to publish its results, because I think it would be good for the industry to discuss what the appropriate methods are” for testing these technologies, Haskell said. “For this industry to move forward, there have to be some kinds of industry benchmarks that are commonly understood.” That’s a view shared by the Department of Energy, which could be a valuable partner in bringing energy disaggregation systems to broader use.

EEme wants to bring its own disaggregation technology into play as a behind-the-scenes addition to other partners, rather than as its own energy portal, Hosgor said. So far it’s piloted with one California utility and another in Texas — while he wouldn’t name either, it’s likely that Austin Energy is the Texas partner — as well as at a U.S. military base. But it’s looking for partners outside the utility space as well, he said.

“We want to be the go-to analytics company in the DSM [demand-side management] market, for everybody to make more targeted and intelligent decisions,” he said. The company has received funding from Carnegie Mellon’s technology transfer center, and “we’re currently raising capital to expand our team and operations.”

Pecan Street’s Haskell noted that large-scale industrial and commercial power users have been using energy data for diagnostic and analysis uses for years. “The kind of work we’re doing is really focused at lowering the hurdle for people to utilize this capability to the point where a mobile app can use this data to save you money in your house, without you having to do much of anything,” he said.

“We would love to facilitate that process,” he said. “I think the industry does need a set of benchmarks — not a single figure of merit, because there are different classifications of problems. We certainly have the data to facilitate a lot of those, particularly when they’re related to residential systems.”

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The 1971 Powell memo told U.S. Chamber of Commerce to develop multi-prong aggressive societal role, “attack the Naders”

Posted on March 12, 2015 by admin

When attempting to stop Smart Meters in local communities, members of the public have often found the Chamber of Commerce promoting Smart Meters and representing the utility companies.

This memo, written in 1971 by Lewis Powell, an influential member of the corporate legal community, called on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to take a more active and aggressive role in the country in promoting their voice. In it, he detailed the many avenues of influence the Chamber  could take in asserting their influence.

Lewis Powell became Associate Justice on the Supreme Court the following year, serving on the Supreme Court from 1972 – 1987.

Background information:

From Wikipedia:

Powell was a partner for over a quarter of a century at Hunton, Williams, Gay, Powell and Gibson, a large Virginia law firm, with its primary office in Richmond (now known as Hunton & Williams LLP). Powell practiced primarily in the areas of corporate law (especially in the field of mergers and acquisitions) and in railway litigation law. He had been a board member of Philip Morris from 1964 until his court appointment in 1971 and had acted as a contact point for the tobacco industry with the Virginia Commonwealth University. Through his law firm, Powell represented the Tobacco Institute and various tobacco companies in numerous law cases…

On August 23, 1971, prior to accepting President Nixon’s request to become an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, Powell sent the “Confidential Memorandum” titled “Attack on the American Free Enterprise System.” He argued, “The most disquieting voices joining the chorus of criticism came from perfectly respectable elements of society: from the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians.” In the memorandum, Powell advocated “constant surveillance” of textbook and television content, as well as a purge of left-wing elements. He named consumer advocate Ralph Nader as the chief antagonist of American business.[19]

This memo foreshadowed a number of Powell’s court opinions, especially First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, which shifted the direction of First Amendment law by declaring that corporate financial influence of elections through independent expenditures should be protected with the same vigor as individual political speech. Much of the future Court opinion in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission relied on the same arguments raised in Bellotti.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_F._Powell,_Jr.

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CPUC President Peevey: “There really are people who feel pain, etc. related to EMF”

Posted on February 7, 2015 by admin

A massive corruption scandal is unfolding in California at the Public Utilities Commission.

As a result of a lawsuit by the City of San Bruno, PG&E was forced to release 65, 000 emails. Buried in those emails is a startling admission from former CPUC President Michael Peevey in September 2010. This is EMF Safety Network’s report on that email.

CPUC President Peevey “There really are people who feel pain related to EMF”
February 7, 2015

In April 2010 the EMF Safety Network filed a CPUC application on smart meters. We asked for a moratorium, an independent technical review, evidentiary hearings on health and safety, and the right to opt out.

In December 2010 CPUC President Michael Peevey approved PG&E’s motion to dismiss our application.  He stated “I believe that relying on the FCC in this case is reasonable, prudent and fully consistent with our responsibilities to provide safe and reliable electric service to ratepayers.” He concluded his statements by stating, “You should take these concerns to the FCC, it’s the proper body.”

Nearly five years later 65,000 emails between PG&E and the CPUC have been publicly released. Emails reveal the collusion between CPUC and PG&E. They discussed the smart meter problems privately, violating their own rules of procedure.

In September 2010 Peevey emailed PG&E’s Brian Cherry on smart meters.  He did not say he thought we should take the issue to the FCC.

Peevey believed people were suffering from smart meters.  He believed PG&E should do something about it. However, instead of regulating the utility to ensure public safety,  he deferred his lawful responsibility to PG&E.

Michael Peevey wrote, “One thought for the company: If it were my decision I would let anyone who wants to keep their old meter keep it, if they claim they suffer from EMF and/or related electronic-related illnesses and they can produce a doctor’s letter saying so (or expressing concern about the likelihood of suffering same). I would institute such a policy quietly and solely on an individual basis. There really are people who feel pain, etc., related to EMF,etc., and rather than have them becoming hysterical, etc., I would quietly leave them alone. Kick it around. And, it sounds like the company may already have taken this step, based on a couple of the comments at yesterday’s public hearing.

He writes, “If it were my decision”.  As the Commissioner assigned to the proceeding- it was HIS decision. Yet, Peevey defers his lawful duty to PG&E.  And he delayed on this case for years.

Peevey wanted PG&E to keep it quiet– didn’t want other customers, or the rest of the world to know there’s a problem with smart meters causing customers pain, etc.

You can find this email/quote here: ftp://ftp2.cpuc.ca.gov/PG&E20150130ResponseToA1312012Ruling/2010/09/SB_GT&S_0000529.pdf

Stay tuned for more EMAIL exposé! Yet to come: emails showing CPUC and PGE discussing alternatives to smart meters, including a phone line option. Email showing the CPUC stopped PG&E from giving small businesses an analog meter option, AND MORE!

CPUC President Peevey “There really are people who feel pain related to EMF”

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