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.
This has been a thing since the first indoor growers fired up their multiple 1,000W MH bulbs. It’s probably safe to assume that utility usage has been a data point since the 1800s. Law enforcement loves data points.