Naughty Sacramento cops spy on energy records to target weed growers

Using an unusually high amount of energy? This might be due to air conditioning or charging your EV at night, of course. But in Sacramento, the capital of California, the cops seem to think you’re growing weed.

Curiously, the case has attracted attention from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a digital rights group. That’s because it is accusing the Sacramento cops of illegally using residents’ power meters as tools of mass surveillance.

According to a statement from the EFF, local law enforcement authorities have worked with local power company, the Sacramento Municipal Utilities District (SMUD), to find households using a suspiciously high amount of energy.

The rights group commenced legal action against SMUD two years ago. Now, it has finished its investigation and filed a petition with the judge.

According to the filed document (PDF), Sacramento cops asked SMUD to identify customers in particular ZIP codes whose energy consumption exceeded the monthly threshold. The suspicion was that they’re turning on power-hungry lamps used to grow cannabis indoors.

This has allegedly been going on for around a decade. More than 33,000 tips were passed on to the police, and the scheme, the EFF says, has specifically targeted Asian customers.

SMUD analysts deemed one home suspicious because it was “4k [kWh], Asian,” and another suspicious because “multiple Asians have reported there.”

According to the petition, Sacramento police sent accusatory letters in English and Chinese, but no other language, to residents who used above-average amounts of electricity. Some of them were threatened with arrest.

All this despite SMUD analysts themselves explaining that high power usage could come from air conditioning, heat pumps, or even using extra electricity to power Christmas lights. Some houses are also just big.

In California, the law explicitly protects the privacy of power customers, prohibiting public utilities from disclosing precise smart meter data in most cases.

Aircons are increasingly needed to cope with the heat waves that are now common in Northern California.

One analyst allegedly told the cops: “Make sure you guys do your own investigation because there’s tons [of] a/c.”

Unsurprisingly, the EFF filed the lawsuit with the Asian American Liberation Network, which advocates for Asian American rights. It’s seeking to end “dragnet surveillance of energy customers” and has asked for a court order to stop the practice.

In California, the law explicitly protects the privacy of power customers, prohibiting public utilities from disclosing precise smart meter data in most cases.

“Sacramento’s mass surveillance scheme does not qualify for one of the narrow exceptions to this rule,” said the EFF.