4 ms·

There's also data leakage, even within the context of "working as expected." Recently, a clerk with the local/county municipality showed be a circa 4 am toilet

There's also data leakage, even within the context of "working as expected." Recently, a clerk with the local/county municipality showed be a circa 4 am toilet flush and hand washing at my place-- based upon the single spike and amount of water used. Me slightly creeped out. The new remote-read water meters break down usage to at least the hour level -- that's what the interface she was in provided. I can't go to the can without someone "watching". Do I start "obscuring" or "polluting" my toiletries with random flushes and runs out to the backyard bushes? Maybe I need to roboticize this with a Raspberry Pi (overkill?) or Arduino. (But what random number generator/source do I use?) If I had money to burn, I could install a cistern that I would draw into only periodically in large bursts. My water meter is, via a local 433 MHz uplink, on "the Internet of Things". My friend's dog now has more privacy with regard to his bowel movements.

tcoff91 10y ago
What was the context around you being shown that information by the clerk?
- pasbesoin 10y ago
  I asked about recent increases in my billed amounts and whether my account might be connected to the wrong meter -- something I've read is happening as these systems are deployed. The clerks have a system at the counter that is already signed in at some degree of administrator level. They can pull up any record they wish, on the spot. There appears to be no concern about logging or auditing of access. The clerk just took my account number from the bill I brought with me and pulled up my usage for the last couple of days. Swung the screen around and asked whether it looked familiar (it did). I have access to the same system -- supposedly only for my own account, after I go through an initial sign-up/on process. I wonder how secure that external access to accounts is, but I can't speak to this at this point. My understanding from reading is also that a lot of these systems transmit unencrypted on the 433 MHz band as they communicate up to local aggregators. I didn't bring that up with the clerk. By the way, I was given no choice to opt-out of this deployment.
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    Fighting the temptation to start injecting some packets on that network must be hard.
    - dogma1138 10y ago
      Fighting the temptation not to go to jail isn't that hard.
    - cwilkes 10y ago
      A laxative will help with that
EvanAnderson 10y ago
Many electric "smart" meters will expose your electrical usage in just this manner too. With electricity, at least, it's economically feasible to get a "cistern" (Tesla Powerwall, etc).
- mschuster91 10y ago
  That does not work. A Powerwall or other battery will just increase the base load over the time it's charging (or decrease the load when it empties), but you will still have noticeable load spikes by which you can identify the device. Actually, it's even possible to identify certain devices by eye if you have a sufficiently detailed log (I could, for example, distinguish a coffee machine, a dishwasher and a fridge, as well as lights with different wattages, at a resolution of 1-2 measurements/s). Their patterns are quite distinguishable.
  - heywire 10y ago
    I believe this is how the sense.com devices work...
  - EvanAnderson 10y ago
    Oh, I definitely agree. The cistern analogy with water would function the same way-- refilling from the public water supply as it was drawn upon. I assumed one would disconnect from the public utility input to obscure usage patterns, "refilling" in bulk at a later time. (I did think the Powerwall was aimed at load-shifting, though, too.)
heywire 10y ago
The flip side of this is when you're on vacation and your small-town municipal office calls you and asks if you're filling a pool, as their system has detected and flagged a constant usage over a XX hour period. In my case it was the toilet I flushed right before we left for vacation. It had been running since we left. Their call meant that I could call a family member to go over to our house and find the source of the issue, saving us hundreds of dollars in water usage. It also caused me to start digging into the communications protocol for our electric and water meters [1]. Unfortunately a recent software upgrade has enabled encryption by default on the electric meter transmissions, so I'm only able to decode water meter now, and I'm not sure how long that will last. Edit: Here's the screenshot of usage data they sent me when I inquired [2]. The dropoff on 7/25 is when our family member shut off water to the running toilet. [1] https://github.com/shaunhey/ea_receiver https://github.com/shaunhey/ea_receiver [2] https://ibb.co/dZ2Otv https://ibb.co/dZ2Otv

tcoff91 10y ago

What was the context around you being shown that information by the clerk?

pasbesoin 10y ago
I asked about recent increases in my billed amounts and whether my account might be connected to the wrong meter -- something I've read is happening as these systems are deployed. The clerks have a system at the counter that is already signed in at some degree of administrator level. They can pull up any record they wish, on the spot. There appears to be no concern about logging or auditing of access. The clerk just took my account number from the bill I brought with me and pulled up my usage for the last couple of days. Swung the screen around and asked whether it looked familiar (it did). I have access to the same system -- supposedly only for my own account, after I go through an initial sign-up/on process. I wonder how secure that external access to accounts is, but I can't speak to this at this point. My understanding from reading is also that a lot of these systems transmit unencrypted on the 433 MHz band as they communicate up to local aggregators. I didn't bring that up with the clerk. By the way, I was given no choice to opt-out of this deployment.
- jacquesm 10y ago
  Fighting the temptation to start injecting some packets on that network must be hard.
  - dogma1138 10y ago
    Fighting the temptation not to go to jail isn't that hard.
  - cwilkes 10y ago
    A laxative will help with that

EvanAnderson 10y ago

Many electric "smart" meters will expose your electrical usage in just this manner too. With electricity, at least, it's economically feasible to get a "cistern" (Tesla Powerwall, etc).

mschuster91 10y ago
That does not work. A Powerwall or other battery will just increase the base load over the time it's charging (or decrease the load when it empties), but you will still have noticeable load spikes by which you can identify the device. Actually, it's even possible to identify certain devices by eye if you have a sufficiently detailed log (I could, for example, distinguish a coffee machine, a dishwasher and a fridge, as well as lights with different wattages, at a resolution of 1-2 measurements/s). Their patterns are quite distinguishable.
- heywire 10y ago
  I believe this is how the sense.com devices work...
- EvanAnderson 10y ago
  Oh, I definitely agree. The cistern analogy with water would function the same way-- refilling from the public water supply as it was drawn upon. I assumed one would disconnect from the public utility input to obscure usage patterns, "refilling" in bulk at a later time. (I did think the Powerwall was aimed at load-shifting, though, too.)

heywire 10y ago

The flip side of this is when you're on vacation and your small-town municipal office calls you and asks if you're filling a pool, as their system has detected and flagged a constant usage over a XX hour period. In my case it was the toilet I flushed right before we left for vacation. It had been running since we left. Their call meant that I could call a family member to go over to our house and find the source of the issue, saving us hundreds of dollars in water usage. It also caused me to start digging into the communications protocol for our electric and water meters [1]. Unfortunately a recent software upgrade has enabled encryption by default on the electric meter transmissions, so I'm only able to decode water meter now, and I'm not sure how long that will last. Edit: Here's the screenshot of usage data they sent me when I inquired [2]. The dropoff on 7/25 is when our family member shut off water to the running toilet. [1] https://github.com/shaunhey/ea_receiver https://github.com/shaunhey/ea_receiver [2] https://ibb.co/dZ2Otv https://ibb.co/dZ2Otv