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I recently wrote to my electric company, Penelec, in reply in their letter threatening me with a "Smart Meter." Some readers may be interested in what I wrote:

"Dear Pennsylvania Electric Company President Wyman, agents, officer, employees, contractors, and interested parties:

In reply to your letter, copy enclosed, please be advised that you and all other parties are hereby denied consent for installation and operation of any and all “Smart Meters” or any other EMF/RF-emitting, surveillance and activity-monitoring device, or devices, on my property. Definitionally, included within the term “Smart Meter” is any radio frequency-emitting electronic device of a two-way wireless nature, e.g., ZigBee radio. Your proposed installation of a surveillance-and-monitoring electronic device that sends and receives communication technology is hereby refused and prohibited.

Please note that I DO understand and embrace my responsibilities under our original agreement. YOU agreed to record my monthly consumption of electricity and bill me at the going rate for its use. I agreed to pay you, to permit your agents access to the mechanical meter which records usage, and to permit your agents to verify that the meter has not been tampered with in any way. Nothing has changed in this regard. I am merely informing you of our original and ongoing agreement. I will continue to make full payment commensurate with the electricity you provide to my residence. If you can no longer afford to pay meter reading employees, be assured that I am fully capable and willing to report monthly meter readings in accordance with the schedule posted at your website. I note that Penelec is required to verify the meter reading and meter integrity only once a year, and I would always permit you such access for that annual reading/verification. So that is not an issue.

Please understand, you provide me with a most necessary commodity, i.e., electric energy. But your provision of electricity does not entitle you, the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, or any other state governmental agency or entity to subject me to loss of my rights, safety, and health. “Smart Meters” are a threat to me in the following ways:

1. They have the potential, when equipped with full functionality, to identify electrical devices inside my home and record when they are operated—causing invasion of privacy.

2. They have the potential, when full functionality is achieved, to record information sufficient so that reasonably intelligent individuals could infer details of household activity and occupancy via hacking into microwave technology, thereby threatening my rights and domestic security.

3. They transmit wireless signals which may be intercepted by unauthorized and unknown parties. Those signals can be used to monitor behavior and occupancy and they can, potentially, be used by criminals to aid criminal activity against occupants of my residence.

4. Data about occupants' daily habits and activities can and will be collected, recorded, and stored in permanent databases which could potentially be accessed by parties not authorized or invited to know and share that private data by those whose activities were recorded, thereby interfering with my U.S. Constitutional rights.

5. Those with access to the smart meter databases possess the capability to review a permanent history of household activities, complete with calendar and time-of-day metrics, to gain a highly invasive and detailed view of the lives of occupants.

6. Those databases may be shared with, or fall into the hands of criminals, blackmailers, corrupt law enforcement officials, private or state hackers of wireless transmissions, power company employees, and other unidentified parties who may act against the interests of occupants under metered surveillance.

7. “Smart Meters” are, by definition, surveillance devices which violate Federal and State wiretapping laws by recording and storing databases of private and personal activities and behaviors without the consent or knowledge of those people who are monitored.

8. Unauthorized and distant parties with no more than average intelligence could analyze certain “Smart Meter” data to potentially determine medical conditions, sexual activities, and physical locations of persons within the home, vacancy patterns, and assorted personal information and habits of occupants.

9. Penelec has not adequately disclosed the particular recording and transmission capabilities of the “Smart Meter,” or the extent of when, or to what technological level of functionality it will be equipped.

10. Penelec's/First Energy's website states that “the Companies collect and retain Sensitive Customer Information that is reasonably necessary to serve customers,. . . and that they will not disclose a customer's information without prior consent, except [when they do].” The follow-up statement that “The Companies protect Sensitive Customer Information under current privacy protection laws, regardless of meter type,” is in many ways absurd in light of the level of protection afforded by a mechanical/analogue meter to the completely inferior and unsatisfactory protection afforded by a “Smart Meter,” including smart meters' propensities for hot sockets, fires, and transmitting high frequency pulses (dirty electricity) on to homes' copper electric wires inside walls.

11. Electromagnetic and Radio Frequency (RF) energy contamination from “Smart Meters” present a health-risk to many, if not all, persons faced with constant exposure causing electromagnetic hypersensitivity or what physicians call idiopathic environmental intolerance. Your placement of a “Smart Meter” on my residence has such a potential of exposing occupants of my residence to such risk. Your letter asserts that your “Smart Meter” is safe, but presents no third-party, i.e., Underwriters Laboratories, proof; nor do you warrant the safety of your product or state what your product liability is, in the case you are mistaken.

12. “Smart Meters” can be hacked and will be hacked. The small CPU in these meters cannot protect itself as well as a home PC can, and home PCs are well known for being compromised. By deploying these in the millions with the same exact software and hardware, they become a huge target and will endanger the community if a clever attacker can devise how to switch power on and off from remote en masse. This characteristic of uniform hardware and software, combined wireless technology, makes “Smart Meters” extremely vulnerable.

13.”Smart Meters” are not protected from EMP attacks, large EMPs or localized EMPs as simple as someone with a battery and a coil (Electro Magnetic Pulse).

14. Disabling the receiver will not prevent other forms of “hacks.” For example, a malicious attacker could confuse the internal CPU, reset it, change random memory locations, change the KWH reading, force a power disconnect, or completely disable a “Smart Meter” with a simple coil of wire and a small battery. This can't happen with a mechanical meter—you know, the kind I have now. It is well known that a wide-area EMP can take out car computers; “Smart Meters” will now make that possible on the city-wide electric infrastructure.

15. A thief or burglar could employ the same EMP or hacking methods to turn off the house power even if the electrical switch box is locked.

16. Encryption of data is irrelevant due to well known “Tempest” attacks. I assume you understand this already, and that I need not explain this to you.

17. Penelec has not adequately disclosed the encryption or security methods to the public. The source code to any data encryption must be open-source and peer reviewed by the security community at large in order to be as secure as possible. Security by obscurity is no security at all.

18. Penelec may claim a mandate to install a “Smart Meter” on my house, but I have never agreed to any such thing. Implied consent might be inferred from those who remain silent. This letter informs you to the fact that I am neither silent nor consenting of your claim to retrofit a “Smart Meter” on the exterior of my home.

By this letter I make DEMAND that you immediately cease and desist from any attempt to remove the mechanical electric meter from my residence for the purpose of replacing it with a “Smart Meter.” I forbid, refuse, and deny consent of any installation and use of any monitoring, eavesdropping, and surveillance devices on my property, my place of residence, and my place of occupancy.

I reserve the right to amend this NOTICE and COMPLAINT at any time, if you are unwilling to accede to my DEMAND. My fore-stated concerns about “Smart Meters” are merely a summary, not a comprehensive list. Additionally, since “Smart Meter” technology is new, new information is coming to the fore every day. My concerns in this letter are not in any particular order of priority.

This is legal notice. After this delivery, the liabilities listed above may not be denied or avoided by parties named and implied in this notice.

Sincerely,

Kerri Ellen Wilder

Lanesboro