Sacramento’s power company and law enforcement agencies have been running an illegal mass surveillance scheme for years, using our power meters as home-mounted spies. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is seeking to end Sacramento’s dragnet surveillance of energy customers and have asked for a court order to stop this practice for good.
also note those home monitoring devices that attach to your breakers and monitor the signatures of specific devices. nothing stopping a power meter from doing similar.
This is called Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring (NILM) and it can literally identify what appliances you’re using and when based on their electrical “fingerprints” - creepy af how much these “smart” meters can actually see into your home.