Quarantine Quandary

Photo courtesy: Facebook Timeline Photos

As the ISIS crisis is conveniently ignored right before the election, the main stream media is focusing on the next crisis, the Ebola spread and the schizophrenic response from the CDC. Meanwhile Congress is silent, waiting for guidance on what opinion they should form before they actually do the job they were elected to do, legislate to protect the best interests of the American people.

The Congressional Research Service has issued a report on October 9, 2014, RL 33201, outlining the federal and state quarantine and isolation authority. Jared P. Cole, Legislative attorney, overviewed the state and federal public health laws in regards to the “quarantine and isolation of individuals” when individual liberties will be restricted. http://fas.org/sgp/crs/homesec/RL33201.pdf

The state public health authority is derived from the Tenth Amendment. The federal public health authority to “prescribe quarantine and other health measures” is derived from the Commerce Clause, a clause that gives Congress authority to regulate interstate and international commerce.

Cole describes two measures that can be undertaken by health authorities in order to prevent those infected with or exposed to a contagious disease from infecting others:

-          Quarantine (separating individuals exposed to an infection but “not yet ill” from those who had not been exposed)

-          Isolation (separating “infected individuals” from those who are not infected)

http://www.flu.gov/planning-preparedness/federal/pandemic-influenza-implementation.pdf

The state health departments have primary quarantine authority.  (Cole, RL33201, p. 4)

“The federal government may assist or take over the management of an intrastate incident if requested by a state or if the federal government determines local efforts are inadequate.”  http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dq/sars_facts/isolationquarantine.pdf

Who is responsible for preventing the outbreak and spread of an infectious disease in the U.S.?

The Secretary of Health and Human Services has the authority granted by Section 361 of the Public Health Service Act to make and enforce regulations “to prevent the introduction, transmission, or spread of communicable diseases from foreign countries into the States.” (RL33201, pp. 4-5)

The HHS Secretary has broad authority to “apprehend, detain, or conditionally release a person.” The Secretary can only do so with communicable diseases that are included in the Executive Order 13295 of April 4, 2003. The diseases listed are cholera, diphtheria, infectious tuberculosis, plague, smallpox, yellow fever, viral hemorrhagic fevers (including Ebola), severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), and influenza viruses with the potential to cause a pandemic.

The HHS Secretary transferred quarantine authority in 2000 to the Director of the CDC. Measures for interstate and foreign quarantine are now under CDC’s Division of Global Migration and Quarantine. http://www.cdc.gov/ncpdcid/dgmq/index.html.

Federal regulations authorize the “apprehension, detention, examination, or conditional release” only of persons coming into a state from a foreign country.” Ship captains and airline pilots are required to report immediately the presence of ill passengers on board their vessels.  “If found to be infected, such individuals may be detained for such time and in such manner as may be reasonably necessary.” (Cole, p. 5)

If someone becomes violently ill on domestic and international flights, pilots are required to notify before arrival the CDC Quarantine Station closest to their destination airport. Twenty such stations are located at ports of entry into the U.S., assisted by DHS in “the enforcement of quarantine rules and regulations.”

Since we have not stopped flights originating from West Africa where Ebola has reached epidemic proportions, the probability of such infectious persons arriving daily is very real.

The Director of the CDC is in charge of preventing the spread of communicable diseases from state to state.

Cole said, “To prevent the spread of diseases between states, the regulations prohibit infected persons from traveling from one state to another without a permit from the health officer of the state, possession, or locality of destination, if such a permit is required under the law applicable to the place of destination. (RL33201, p. 7)

Cole added that the Secretary of HHS can bar the entry of persons from foreign countries if the “existence of any communicable disease” poses a “serious danger” of entering the United States. The “suspension of the right to introduce such persons and property is required in the interest of public health.” The 2005 proposed rule for this statutory authority was not adopted. (70 Fed. Reg. 71892)

Then there is the Do Not Board (DNB) list which was developed by DHS and CDC and made operational in June 2007. To make this list a person must be:

-          Likely contagious with a communicable disease

-          Ignorant or non-compliant with the recommended medical treatment (such as someone with antibiotic resistant TB)

-          Likely to board a commercial aircraft or boat

At the state level, state police has the authority of quarantine and isolation; time and manner vary from state to state. Most quarantine state laws are 40-100 years old, lacking the contemporary scientific knowledge of communicable diseases. (RL33201, p. 10)

Can an individual have the right to challenge his or her quarantine or isolation?

Some courts recognize the petition for a writ of habeas corpus, to test the legality of the detention. “Often petitioners seek a declaration that the statute under which they were quarantined is unconstitutional.” (RL33201, p. 11)

Here are some legal challenges described in Cole’s  report:

-          Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824, the Supreme Court “alluded to a state’s authority to quarantine under the police powers”

-          Compagnie Francaise de Navigation a Vapeur v. Louisiana State Board of Health, 1902, “addressed a state’s power to quarantine an entire geographic area” (even though commerce was affected, the quarantine was not unconstitutional)

-          In another case, the court ruled that “it is ‘well settled’ that states may impose quarantines to prevent the spread of disease even though quarantines ‘affect interstate commerce’”

-          Miller v. Campbell City (leaking methane and hydrogen gases prompted an entire area quarantine which was broken by a resident who tried to go home; the court decided that the quarantine was not in bad faith or malicious)

-          U.S. v. Shinnick (a female passenger who could not prove vaccination after arriving from a smallpox-infected area in Stockholm, Sweden, was placed in isolation)

-          People ex rel. Barmore v. Robertson (woman who ran a boarding house and boarded an infected person, was quarantined in her home as a carrier of typhoid fever)

-          O’Connor v. Donaldson (man diagnosed with tuberculosis was hospitalized a few days in New York against his will; the court ruled that a “state’s police powers may confine individuals solely to protect society from the dangers of antisocial acts or communicable diseases”)

-          Wong Wai v. Williamson (San Francisco Board of Health “ordered all Chinese residents to be inoculated against bubonic plague, restricting their right to leave the city, citing nine deaths allegedly from plague. The inoculations were tainted, causing severe consequences.”)

-          Jew Ho v. Williamson (the quarantine was discriminatory since it applied only to Chinese residents, a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment; it questioned whether the plague actually caused the deaths)

http://fas.org/sgp/crs/homesec/RL33201.pdf

Cole raises the question of potential future legal challenges:

1.      Eminent domain

-          case of widespread domestic public health emergency, if the quarantine and isolation necessitate private facilities when medical facilities become overburdened

In August 2003, after a heat wave caused 11,000 deaths in Paris, the government took over refrigerated warehouses as temporary morgues.

The State of Washington, after a volcanic eruption, restricted access to a town near the volcano. The court declared the “exercise of police power permissible and did not require compensation.”

           

2.      Self-imposed or home quarantines

-          can a “state support a population asked to voluntarily stay at home for a period of time”

-          can a state provide “legal immunity to businesses asked to provide facilities for quarantine”

We have the power and rules in place for quarantine and isolation in order to safeguard the health of the people of the United States from illegal immigrants’ communicable diseases like Ebola and the enterovirus D68 which has already killed several children. Instead, Congress is busy playing politics with people’s lives in order to win elections and to support this administration’s immigration policy. Scanning someone’s temperature at the airport is a sick joke.

We are not stopping flights from the affected Ebola zones, and illegal alien children from Latin America are still entering through our southern border, and are still being dispersed among our healthy children. Our soldiers, highly trained for war but sent to West Africa to play doctors, are going to be placed in quarantine in Liberia in the event they should become infected with Ebola, while potentially sick West Africans are still given visas every day to fly to the “racist” United States for first class treatment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Coal Miners and Mountaintop Strip Mining

I was in a terminal at Reagan National Airport recently and an electronic ad drew my attention. It was the beautiful face of a middle aged gentleman creased by time, worries, and hard work. He introduced himself as Sid. “I’m proud of my Appalachian roots,” he said. “And I won’t give up on our mountains.” In smaller letters, at the bottom of the ad sponsored by Earth Justice, earthjustice.org/MyStory, was one sentence, “Tell us your story to help stop mountaintop removal coal mining.”

I became intrigued and decided to check this story out. After all, I want to keep mountain tops intact and our environment as clean as possible. I love nature and marvel at God’s magnificent creation. I also realize that nature can unleash so many disasters on our planet that land formations are forever destroyed and areas no longer look the same.

The Congressional Research Service published a recent report, “Mountaintop Mining: Background on Current Controversies,” describing the practice of removing the top of a mountain in order to recover coal seams trapped in the rock within, currently done in six Appalachian states, Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and Ohio on 12 million acres. (Claudia Copeland, Specialist in Resources and Environmental Policy, April 29, 2013)

The issues she described involve both the critics and the proponents of this type of mining:

-          Critics want it stopped entirely because the mining fills the valleys with tons of broken rocks and dirt, affecting stream water quality and the habitat of aquatic life and wildlife

-          Proponents claim that it is not economically feasible to discharge the rock and dirt somewhere else and this type of low sulfur coal is needed

-          Environmental groups were able to stop mountaintop mining project permits at the federal district court level, sometimes overturned on appeal, and then reversed again

-          Environmental criticism caused “some regulatory changes” to reduce the harmful environmental impact from mountaintop mining in Appalachia

-          Environmental groups were critical that the EPA’s restrictions did not go far enough with the enhanced permit review process

-          The additional scrutiny has angered the coal industry; EPA has vetoed a mine permit in West Virginia, was overturned by a federal court, and that ruling was recently reversed on appeal

-          111^th Congress sought to restrict the practice of mountaintop mining but also issued legislation to block the Obama Administration’s regulatory actions

-          113^th Congress introduced bills to clarify or restrict EPA’s authority to veto Clean Water Act (CWA) permits issued by the Corps (H.R. 524 and S. 830)

According to federal law, the rock, broken with explosives and moved with massive draglines, a type of earth moving equipment, must be placed back in the mined areas, “returning the lands to their approximate original contour.” That is something hard to do since broken rocks take up more volume than the original intact boulders, and any pile of broken rock becomes unstable. Thus the excess rock is “typically placed in valley fills on the sides of the former mountain,” burying streams flowing through the valleys, stream chemistry is harmed, and  aquatic life is impaired  downstream.

Why is mountaintop mining then popular? According to the Congressional Research Service Report, there are three main reasons:

1.      “There is a demand for the relatively clean-burning, low-sulfur coal found in Appalachia.

2.      Coal supplies near the surface have been significantly depleted.

3.      The development of large surface mining equipment (draglines) can move 100 cubic yards of earth in a single scoop.” (p. 1)

In the case of mountaintop mining, regulatory valley fills fall under two federal statutes, the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA, 30 U.S.C., par. 1201) and the Clean Water Act (CWA, 33 U.S.C. par. 1252).

Section 404 permits are issued by the “Corps for the discharge of dredged or fill material, using guidelines promulgated by EPA in conjunction with the Corps.” Permits are issued for a “particular site and nationwide (general) for categories of discharges that are similar and have a minimal impact on the waters of the United States.” Enforcing the Endangered Species Act (35 U.S.C. par. 1531) and the Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act (16 U.S.C. par. 661) is the responsibility of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) which considers how fish and wildlife are impacted and ensures that endangered species are protected. (p. 3)

I have seen a mountaintop mine in Pennsylvania and I can attest that it was unsettling to see a barren and dark grey area which used to be covered by lush forests and mountainous landscape. It reminded me of a lunar landscape.

At the same time, everything we do in our modern life involves the use of electricity which is primarily obtained from fossil fuels, especially coal. I don’t want to reverse our daily life back to early middle ages – I prefer a carefully managed middle of the road approach to “stewardship” of the environment, to use a word highly over advertised by Agenda 21 proponents. If we are not willing good stewards of everything, we must be nudged and forced by the deciders of what is good and proper - liberals, environmental NGOs, and the EPA octopus.

I am not sure environmentalists are willing to give up all their electronic gadgets, homes, cars, and everything else that is based on fossil fuels and electricity generated with fossil fuels, and move into caves. Renewables, at the current state, do not provide enough energy to supply over six billion people with their daily power needs.

Erosion of mountain tops occurs naturally over time due to wind, rain, ice, snow, avalanche, and deforestation from tree disease, unusual droughts, fires, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions; it is not solely caused by man-made activity such as tree cutting and coal mining.

The Earth Justice website paints a bleak picture of strip mining which has “devastated Appalachia,” claiming that “in the past few decades, over 2,000 miles of streams and headwaters that provide drinking water to millions of Americans have been permanently buried and destroyed. An area the size of Delaware has been flattened. Local coal communities routinely face devastating floods and adverse health effects.”

If so many miles of streams that provide drinking water to millions had been buried, how do these millions get their drinking water? I also wonder if the cancer rate and lung-related illnesses are higher in these areas and if so, do we have factual evidence?

The 13,000 plus people who added their signatures on the Earth Justice website are demanding an end to mountaintop strip mining. Beautiful, young, and smiling faces, writing from various campuses around the nation, add their support to the cause of protecting “the people, communities and waters of Appalachia.”

According to the website, Earth Justice, Appalachian Mountain Advocate and Public Justice are “working in federal courts” on behalf of Coal River Mountain Watch, Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, Sierra Club, Kentuckians for The Commonwealth, Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards, and Statewide Organizing for Community eMpowerment (SOCM).

I pondered how many real miners and those employed in mining-support jobs are members of these environmentalist organizations (NGOs) and if they are on board with losing their jobs and their livelihoods derived from mining activities.  I also wondered how many communities were actually relocated because of mountaintop mining.  Come to think of it, was re-settlement of mass populations not one of the goals of Agenda 21?

I checked the website for links that connected to medical studies, CDC illness data, cancer rates related to mountaintop strip mining, but I must have missed them.

Another group mentioned, Statewide Organizing for Community eMpowerment (SOCM), located in Tennessee, is “working for social, economic, and environmental justice for all.” Their mission states, “We are committed to the journey of becoming an anti-racist organization. Recognizing our interdependence, SOCM is committed to overcoming social and institutional racism and embracing our diverse cultures.” I pondered what overcoming social and institutional racism and embracing our diverse cultures had to do with mountaintop strip mining.  http://www.socm.org/

Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards (SAMS) are “concerned community members and their allies who are working to stop the destruction of our communities by surface coal mining, to improve the quality of life in our area, and to help rebuild sustainable communities.”

The citizens are concerned about the new mountaintop coal removal project in Dickerson County, Virginia.  SAMS, the Sierra Club, and allies have asked the EPA to deny permit for this mine because it “would destroy local communities, pushing people out, property values down, and hope for a better tomorrow away. This mine would poison local streams that provide an economic lifeline through growing eco and adventure tourism in the area.” I am not trying to diminish these grievances, but what is eco and adventure tourism? Is that euphemism for hiking? http://www.samsva.org/

The alternative proposed is to build U.N. Agenda 21’s sustainable communities. Agenda 21 advocates for solar energy, wind energy, biking, no cars if possible, walking, commune type living that does not harm the environment at all and leaves as little human foot print as possible. Exempted, of course, are the Hollywood types, politicians, billionaires, and elites in general who can own as many jets, McMansions, and expensive cars as they can possibly afford. Their use of fossil fuels is perfectly excusable; they are the all-knowing elites who tell us what to do.

Kentuckians for The Commonwealth are an organization formed by a “community of people, inspired by a vision, building new power and a better future for all of us. Together, we organize for a fair economy, a healthy environment, new safe energy and an honest democracy.”  I’ve seen this word, vision, before, used in the “visioning committees” of ICLEI, the infiltrating agents among city planners who developed Green Growth/Smart City rezoning around the country in line with Agenda 21 goals, land owners be damned. If rezoning does not work, eminent domain is a powerful tool of land confiscation in the name of public good. Like the light purple rail being built in northern Virginia – a country club fought with developers and won some concessions because the rail was an ugly addition to their green grass golfing paradise. But 100 or so homeowners were not so lucky, they were bought out.

This particular organization’s vision involves “good jobs without damage to the water, air, and land,” “companies and the wealthy pay their share of taxes and can’t buy elections,” people have health care, shelter, food, education, and other basic needs,” “children are listened to and valued,” “discrimination is wiped out of our laws, habits, and hearts,” and “voices of ordinary people are heard and respected in our democracy.” I honestly don’t know what all the above community organizing/social justice/children belong to the community/election/progressive propaganda has to do with mountaintop strip mining and I am not sure that good jobs exist or any jobs without coal generated energy or jobs that don’t do any damage to water, air, and land. Even teaching, preaching, or indoctrination is not entirely environmentally damage free. They do exhale CO2 just for starters. http://www.kftc.org/about-us/mission-vision

At this point, I was tired of searching these propaganda websites. I did not see one miner who advocated for the loss of his job and of his livelihood in order to give these organizations and their supporters their pristine land back without any human footprint or coal exploration.

According to the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC), mining is the most highly concentrated industries in Appalachia (1.58 times the national share) and mining had the highest job growth in 2000-2008 (39.7%). http://www.arc.gov/images/appregion/Sept2011/EconomicOverviewSept2011.pdf

The Daily Caller wrote recently that the James River Coal company is closing several mines in eastern Kentucky and laying off 525 employees. The GOP blames the EPA regulations. Rep. Hal Rogers (Kentucky-R) told the Daily Caller, “Deliberate anti-coal energy policies are sending thousands of families in my region to the unemployment line.” Lower priced natural gas is the second culprit as it is fast replacing coal in generating electricity. Rogers blamed President Obama’s “War on Coal” for 6,200 unemployed eastern Kentucky miners and thousands more laboring in mining support businesses.

The Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet (KEEC) reported that a total of 12,342 people are working in Kentucky coal mines, the lowest number on record since statistics were kept in 1927.

As the EPA bans the construction of new coal-fired power plants unless carbon capture and storage technology are used, an impossibility since capture and storage are not commercially available yet, more mines will be closed and miners will lose their jobs.

While denying that a “War on Coal” exists, the Obama administration provided $8 billion in loan guarantees to biofuels, carbon capture, and storage technology development.

The onerous EPA sent its Alaska Environmental Crimes Task Force dressed in full body armor to check water quality in Chicken, Alaska, a gold mining town of 17 full-time residents and dozens of seasonal miners.  Sean Doogan reported that miners were surprised that such drastic measures were taken instead of just showing up and taking water samples. http://www.alaskadispatch.com/print/article/2013/gold-miners-near-chicken-cry-foul-over-heavy-handed-epa-raids

As I look back at the electronic ad in the airport, I wonder, what our green energy quota will be in this country, as utilities will struggle to meet the outrageous demands coming from the federal government, while more and more coal-generating power plants will be closed, and more miners will lose their jobs. Mining will become the elephant in the room relic while we will strain our eyes to read by an anemic CFL bulb mandated by the EPA, said bulb requiring a Hazmat suit to dispose of in case it breaks. Our nights will be very dark in the near future with less ambient light in the sky. What will happen to nightlife in Vegas? Will United States’ night view from space be like North Korea’s?

 

Smart Grid and Smart Meters Health, Privacy and Cybersecurity Issues

The American Academy of Environmental Medicine advised on January 12, 2012 in a letter addressed to the Public Utilities Commission of the State of California that they opposed “the installation of wireless smart meters in homes and schools based on a scientific assessment of the current medical literature. Chronic exposure to wireless radiofrequency radiation is a preventable environmental hazard that is sufficiently well documented to warrant immediate preventative public health action.” (http://emfsafetynetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/AAEM-Resolution.pdf)

“Exposure to levels of radio frequency RF (3KHz-300GHz) and extremely low frequency ELF (300Hz) produced by smart meters warrants immediate and complete moratorium on their use and deployment until further study.”

The FCC guidelines that deem smart meters safe are obsolete because they study only “thermal tissue damage and overlook genetic and cellular effects, hormonal effects, male fertility, blood/brain barrier damage, and increased risk of certain types of cancer from RF and ELF levels similar to those emitted by smart meters.”

As each home becomes a “wireless telecommunications facility,” children are particularly at risk

for altered brain development, impaired learning, and behavior.”

Current safety limits on pulsed RF are considered “not protective of public health” by the Radiofrequency Interagency Working Group (FDA, OSHA, EPA, FCC).  Emissions of smart meters have been classified by the World Health Organization International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) as a possible human carcinogen.

The Congressional Research Service and its legislative attorneys prepare reports for Congress on various issues. Two such reports were issued on smart meters. “Smart Meter Data: Privacy and Cybersecurity” was published on February 3, 2012 and “The Smart Grid and Cybersecurity – Regulatory Policy and Issues” was published on June 15, 2011.

The writers agreed, “unforeseen consequences under federal law may result from the installation of smart meters and the communications technologies that accompany them.” In addition, the information “generated from smart meters is a new frontier for police investigations.”

The Fourth Amendment requires police to have probable cause to search areas in which people have a reasonable expectation of privacy. Courts deny protection to information a customer gives to a business as part of their commercial relationship. Thus, police can access bank records, phone, and traditional utility records through the “third party doctrine.” Technology can erode an individual’s privacy even more.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 gave stimulus money to electric utilities to accelerate the deployment of smart meters to millions of homes via the Department of Energy’s Smart Grid Investment Grant Program. Developers thought that the old patchwork infrastructure did not interface, was an arcane system of electricity delivery, and had to be replaced by a nationwide system called the Smart Grid that could be easily controlled and manipulated from a central location.

Smart meter technology is part of the Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI). It records near-real time data on electricity usage, it transmits data to the Smart Grid, and it “receives communication from Smart Grid such as real-time energy prices, or remote commands that can alter a consumer’s electricity usage to facilitate demand response.”

In case you misunderstand what demand response is, here is the official definition. “Demand response is the reduction of the consumption of electric energy by customers in response to an increase in the price of electricity or heavy burdens on the system.” Notice that the reduction in consumption is not defined as voluntary when there is a heavy burden on the system, and it incorporates the promise by the President that our electricity prices will skyrocket.

Smart meters are designed to decrease peak demand for electricity by turning off electricity to customers by remote. Remotely controlled thermostats will also turn off air conditioning units.

HVAC contractors are required to install programmable thermostats on all systems in areas where city officials have inspection authority created by city councils. Thermostats can be overridden by the smart meter so that a home’s temperature can also be remotely controlled. RFID tracking tags will be gradually installed in all items purchased, including digital thermostats. Non-digital thermostats cannot be tracked and will thus be banned.

The Department of Energy used the $4.5 billion stimulus to reimburse up to 50 percent of smart grid investments, including the cost to electric utilities of buying and installing smart meters. As of September 2011, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) funded 7.2 million smart meters and partially 15.5 million. The Institute for Electric Efficiency (IEE) expects 65 million smart meters in operation by 2015.

The issues for those who generate, seek, or use the data recorded by smart meters are varied.

-          Privacy of electronic communications

            -          Data storage
            -          Computer misuse
            -          Foreign surveillance
            -          Consumer protection
            -          Cybersecurity
            -          Hacking
            -          Health issues
            -          Higher energy costs for consumers
            -          Solar flares
            -           Electromagnetic pulse (EMP)

The myriad of legal entanglements cannot be predicted. According to Richard J. Campbell, Specialist in Energy Policy, “It is unclear how Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable search and seizures would apply to smart meter data, due to the lack of cases on this issue.”

Smart meter technology measures usage as frequently as once every minute, which appliances a consumer is using, what time of day, if a residence is occupied, how many people reside there, if it’s occupied by more people than usual, daily schedules, including times when they are or away from home or asleep, if homes have alarm systems, if they own expensive electronic equipment such as plasma TVs, if they use certain types of medical equipment.” (Department of Energy)

Utility providers match data on electricity usage with “known appliance load signatures” and daily schedules by observing when residents use most electricity. U.S. v. Kyllo subpoenaed electricity spreadsheet records because they suspected an indoor marijuana growing operation. Imagine how much easier it would be today with smart meters.

According to Jeffrey Carr, “Health insurance companies could determine if a house uses certain medical devices and appliance manufacturers could establish if a warranty has been violated.”

Smart meters collect and store data on names, service address, billing information, networked appliances, meter IP address, transactional records, and identity of the transmitter. Data is sent to the grid via twisted–copper phone lines, cable lines, fiber optic cable, cellular, satellite, microwave, WiMAX, power line carrier, and broadband over power line. Wireless costs less but cybersecurity becomes a huge issue because data is stored within the grid and within the physical world.

Smart meters can give police access to eating, sleeping, showering habits, appliance use and when, TV use, and exercise equipment use. Does this uphold the Fourth Amendment that the “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.”

Liberties in the Constitution apply only to actions by the state and federal governments. Utilities can be privately owned, publicly owned, federally operated, and non-profit cooperatives. Under “public records theory, law enforcement can request smart meter data since public records are not afforded Fourth Amendment protection. Law enforcement access to state public records is unrestricted.” (Slobogin, Nilson v. Layton City)

Each state has different rules on whether utility records are public records. For example, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina consider a person’s utility records as public records.

“Third party doctrine,” words told to another person, informant, agent, gave police access to documents in the past such as phone, bank, cell phone, hotel records. Utility records were treated similarly, leaving room for smart meter records abuse.

Hackers could easily capture data from the outside with a hand-held device, sell the information to the highest bidder, or establish patterns in order to rob the house.

A court warrant should be required to access the data but neither the Supreme Court nor any lower federal court has ruled on the use of  smart meters.

Utilities may sell or share data obtained from smart meters with others in order to increase revenues. Utilities are monopolies and customers cannot switch providers in order to avoid the invasion of privacy. Electricity is a necessary component of modern life.

“Advancement of technology threatens to erode further the constitutional protection of privacy.” Individuals face a higher risk that activities inside their homes will be monitored by the government. (Congressional Research Service)

Perhaps people should think twice before they accept the $100 check offered by their utility companies in order to “save the planet” and reduce electric bills. Ask the Californians who have filed a class-action lawsuit against PG&E after smart meters were installed and their electric bills have skyrocketed. Is a small $100 bribe meant to help you or hurt you?