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A power utility is reporting suspected pot growers to cops. EFF says that’s illegal.
(arstechnica.com)
this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2025
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Privacy
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Yeah, despite the wording, I suspect they are looking at the patterns of use with smart meters rather than just "high amounts?" Grow op houses would be easy to see, as they only use power when the lights are on, flat usage, because no one is actually living there. Do you run lights 24x7 with indoor growing? idk. The trouble is, any system like this will catch a few, then they will relax the constraints to "catch more" and boom, now you have false positives. The criminals will also figure it out and mask their usage better by cycling banks of lighting, using batteries, parking some EVs in the driveway or whatever. That cat-and-mouse game will just see increasing privacy invasion and more false positives.
It’s definitely the patterns. What I’m saying is the patterns are not any different for cannabis versus any other photoperiod plant. Cannabis isn’t the only thing you veg under 18/6 and flower under 12/12 light cycles. It’s not illegal to grow plants indoors and if I spend 5kW doing it every day that’s nobody’s business but my own. I’ll use my joules however I feel.
That said, it seems like the way to defeat this type of analysis would be to invest in batteries so you can always have a constant 24h drain rather than 5kW turning on every day at the same time for 18 or 12 hours.
Of course modern criminals are smart. /s
The good ones are. The poor ones suffer the consequences of their own actions. With modern tech crime advances faster under no regulations than laws can. The problem is uneducated criminals lol
Yeah, batteries or cycling different banks at different overlapping intervals so the the household draw averages out to a more reasonable usage pattern. Easy for the criminals to defeat, resulting in false-positives in their detection scheme.
You seem to know a lot about we..., I mean, electricity. Tell us more 🤣🤣
By the way, I'm just joking, as these companies are just getting more dystopian by the second.