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So, Sacramento's utility company, FedCops, detailed behavior data without any court

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orders, consent, or any kind of suspicion. Sacramento Municipal Utilities District or SMUD

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transformed smart meters into government spy devices transmitting citizens every

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electronical impulse to law enforcement databases. Every 15 minutes or so, these meters record

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life patterns, basically. When people wake up, which appliances run, when showers happen, when

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homes sit empty even, SMUD handed this fairly intuitive surveillance data to Sacramento PD

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and the Sheriff's County Office and three other departments without any kind of warrants.

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The threshold for suspicion dropped from 7,000 kilowatt hours per month in 2014

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to just 2,800 hours by 2023. Once SMUD analysts admitted that they personally used 3,500 kilowatts

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last month above their own suspicion threshold, running air conditioning in Sacramento's brutal

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heat basically makes residents criminal suspects. Alphonse O'Nigan needed extra electricity for

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medical equipment due to his spinal injuries and Sheriff's deputies showed up twice demanding

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war and less entry and threatened arrest when he refused. His actual crime was exercising

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his Fourth Amendment rights while using his electricity that he was paying for.

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Brian Decker got the militarization response, deputies with guns drawn and bull horns blaring,

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forcing him outside in his underwear while Babers basically watched and he was mining

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cryptocurrency. He wasn't growing cannabis or anything but SMUD's surveillance didn't

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distinguish between the legal and the illegal electricity use. California's public

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prohibits utilities from actually sharing precise meter data without warrants for court

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orders or like customer consent. Now SMUD violated this law daily for a decade treating statutory

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protections as suggestions while claiming they're required to buy a law to share the data

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when they know they're not. The Sacramento Police Department made 90 requests over a 10-year

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period each covering entire zip codes in July 2023 alone. SMUD sent data on over 10,000 customers

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after police filtering analysts still had 4,800 locations to check for patterns on,

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finding only four homes with suspicious usage. Internal communications actually showed that

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they lacked probable cause but decided to continue anyway and this is something that

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violates Article 1, Section 13 of the California Constitution which protects against unreasonable

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searches and searching entire zip codes with like out any individual suspicion represents exactly

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the general warrant our founding fathers actually prohibited and the city leveraged

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this surveillance into a revenue machine levying 94 million in fines in just two years under

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their cannabis ordinance. They monetized constitutional violations at $500 per plant

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over the six-plant limit turning privacy invasion into profit in a way and the Supreme Court

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already ruled in Kylio vs. United States that thermal imaging of homes requires warrants that's

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with stuff like flare cameras now Justice Scalia wrote that using technology quote not in general

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public use end quote to explore home details that would be unknowable without physical intrusion

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constitutes a search which makes sense smart meters provide far more invasive data and thermal

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imaging for example ever could thermal cameras showed heat patterns and smart meters reveal daily

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routines appliance usage stuff like occupational consistency and occupancy patterns and behavioral

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habits in you know like 15-minute increments basically the seventh circuit ruled in Nappersville

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smart meter awareness that the smart meter data collection constitutes a fourth amendment search

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and the court found that energy consumption data reveals when people are home when they're

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asleep what appliances they use which you know is creating a detailed portrait of their

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private life by default and smud claims that administrative purposes justify their surveillance

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but administrative acts that definitely does not automatically grant lawful authority or allow

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them to become law enforcement's data broker at will the Napperville court explicitly stated

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that law enforcement's access requires a warrant even if administrative collection

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does it so smart meters generate what the Napperville court called data at least is rich

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as thermal imaging in Kailio law enforcement can determine grow like usage with confidence

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basically much more confidence than thermal cameras can actually do by analyzing consumption

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patterns and stuff like timing and smudge privacy policy really hides in the website footer with no

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real mechanism for consumers to refuse that surveillance citizens can't really opt out

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of this electricity service making this forced participation in government surveillance

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infrastructure and the evidence shows smudge proclivity to generate lists and tips for law

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enforcement rather than responding to actual specific investigations they transformed from a

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utility provider into an active surveillance contractor mining their own customers data

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for the police and every smart meter that is actually installed is like a you know private

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government informant that documents bad homes activities and the data gets stored for years

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creating behavioral profiles that law enforcement can then access with no judicial oversight and

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other jurisdictions watch this case very closely waiting you know to try to implement similar

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surveillance partnerships if this whole smud thing actually prevails local utilities nationwide

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become the next government spy networks turning infrastructure against citizens the very bills you

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pay are being used the ensue the october 2025 hearing will determine whether courts protect

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constitutional privacy or legitimize utility surveillance and the you know precedent really

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affects every american with a smart meter essentially everyone in urban and suburban

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areas will definitely be affected smud pretends that their data sharing qualifies for you know

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this narrow statutory exemption but like mass zip code searches do not meet any legal exception

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whatsoever they claim law enforcement's request trigger mandatory compliance with ignoring the

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law's warrant requirements which means it's not a request like they're just giving them

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access to everything smart meters probably sufficiency in grid management instead they create

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what the ff calls a dragnet surveillance grid and it's one that you fund and you pay for

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so like indiscriminate monitoring of the entire community without any suspicion or cause is

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completely unacceptable in the city of sacramento in the police department refuse to comment

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or you know accept any responsibility they hide behind litigation while continuing their

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surveillance which is really just standard authoritarianism you violate rights first

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and you litigate later we started at 7000 kilowatt hour monitoring for actual grow

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operations which i mean shouldn't even be a thing really it's your electricity you pay for

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who the hell is anyone to tell you how much you know you can have this nonsense but then

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we moved you know like more than half that drug enforcement becomes basically mass behavioral

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monitoring of law abiding citizens deputies arrive with free determined kill determining

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you know warrantless entry based on an algorithmic flag and when citizens exercise constitutional

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rights by refusing which they're absolutely entitled to they faced arrest threats and

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intimidation proving surveillance creates the presumption of criminality smart meters collect

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granular usage revealing intimate details basically that the supreme court protects as a core fourth

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amendment issue or in that territory in the sanctuary of the home the core ruled that all

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details are intimate details deserving protection smutton analysts conduct painstaking analysis

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of customer accounts profiling behavior through patterns from energy data and they become

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intelligence analysts rather than utility workers you know mining data for government

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purposes french regulators already sanctioned smart meter providers for collecting granular

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consumption data without valid consent europe recognizes to some degree the privacy invasion

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while american utilities just plead ignorance basically and the lawsuit seeks permanent injunctions

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to actually stop smud surveillance and prevent you know these local cops not like anyone else

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is warranted and doing it but from actually requesting bulk data without warrants it's

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really simple demand like follow the existing law respect the constitution you know the one you

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guys swore and oath the uphold and defend stop spying on customers right like smart meters enable

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what thermal imaging attempted to do peering into homes without that actual physical intrusion

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they could do it remotely to technology completely changed but the fourth amendment protections

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really do still remain and you know the government needs warrants to actually surveil homes

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property owners face like six figure fines based on tenant activity that they actually can't monitor

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electricity bills stay in tenants names and the city collects less than six million of the

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94 million assessed because over 80 challenged the actual penalties smud transformed public

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infrastructure into a complete authoritarian surveillance state providing government partnerships

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with basically corrupt institutions they chose this kind of mass monitoring over customer privacy

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and police cooperation over what should be legal compliance and october's decision that's coming

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up whether utilities remain service providers or become surveillance platforms is really important

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the choice definitely defines whether the smart infrastructure serves citizens or spies on them

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at the end of the day and it's something that i think we should all be aware of and

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be aware of i'll see you the next video