Re: Third wave of cyber attacks ongoing...

Let me share with you a recent smart meter saga.

A relative built a house about 15 years ago. It was the last lot developed in a rural plan that began about 25 years ago. The propery perk-tested as good as other houses most recently built a few years prior BUT because of increase in county and township politicking, those few years were enough to yield new local laws such that my relative was required to install a sand pitt as precaution against routine septic runoff. This added $10,000 upfront total cost of building the house ( and future maintenance expenses) AND rather than having a nice backyard, they got a mound that begins (up slope) about 5 feet beyond the back door and downslopes at the rear property line 🙂 . The utilities (electric, water, cable tv wire) were all brought in below ground. About a year ago the power meter was slowly pulling away from the house, apparently due to subsidance coupled with how the conduit and power cable were routed. A local electrical contractor assessed the situation and scheduled the power co. to shut down the AC while his crew remedied the problem. Power co. required $450 fee to roll a truck/guy to pull the breaker on the transformer and come back a few hours later to turn back on. I was present while contractor and crew did their job. I asked if there was the risk of power co. exploiting this opportunity to install smart meter. He chuckled then adamantly said "no" but I suspected he was not as certain as his answer seemed. When he finished and truck roll guy came back, I saw contractor walk about 50 yards down the road to where the truck parked. He had sort of a private conversation with power co. guy. He came back and said somewhat sheepishly " power co guy won't turn on breaker at transformer until we plug in this new smart meter. "Power co. guy sauntered over to the house and asked innocently " what is wrong with smart meters?". Knowing he was present to do his job in a limited amount of time, I replied that he did not have enough time for me to adequately explain, answer and disabuse his naiveté.

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