The new Smart Home, furnished with Smart appliances and a Smart meter, automatically transmits data to the new Smart Grid. Besides the gadgets featured here, the IOT includes wireless security systems, remote-triggered light switches and thermostats, home computing electronics, telephones, televisions and stereos. Graphic: Pew Intl.
December 19, 2020 -- Adding to the forest of cell towers inundating the country with wireless waves, the brand new 5G network will require its own infrastructure of compact transmitters in order to propagate signals at double the hertz of most mobile phones currently in use. If that news weren't enough to lurch EMF safety advocates back on their heels, many if not most American households have now been outfitted with a new device called the Smart meter. Transmitting at 900 megahertz - the same beefy, highly irradiating frequency as cordless phones - Smart meters eliminate the need for conventional utility meters and the meter readers who once read them. While the labor savings may sound like progress, you'll be surprised to learn that Smart Meters don't send only one signal once a month to your electric utility company.
It turns out, Smart meters emit a radiofrequency (RF) signal at least ten thousand times each day. Despite their short duration, these energy pulses have been measured at alarming levels by radiation detectors, leading many nonprofit watchdog groups to issue frank warnings to the public. Actor Suzanne Summers, who lives in California, explained in a YouTube video a few years ago that she refused to allow a technician to install the device on her home's service panel. As a result, she was forced to pay a monthly charge to get her meter read. She noted in her video that no law requires any property owner to accept a Smart meter. Meanwhile, those who already have Smart meters installed can switch back to a non-wireless meter, since both analog and digital models are still available.
Alternatively, homeowners can place an EMF shielding cover over their Smart meter to block about 95 percent of the radiation. This won't impede signal transmission to the utility company, so the ratepayer can't be penalized for using the cover. Smart meter covers can be purchased online or made DIY from everyday materials, such as metal screen fabric and aluminum foil tape sold at home improvement stores. (A grounding wire should also be attached to the cover when it's installed.) EMF advocates claim Smart meters without these covers pose a significant health risk for anyone lingering within a 20-foot radius of the device for more than a few minutes. Bedrooms, kitchens and garage work shops are typically located near the utility service panel, where most Smart meters are perched.
In the case of apartments, condos and commercial buildings, Smart meters have been routinely installed in banks, often without notice given to tenants. The bank of meters may be visible on an external wall, but just as often it's mounted inside a locked room without any sign to indicate its presence. Because numerous meters are transmitting wireless signals in the same place, the radiation threat is multiplied, posing an even greater health threat than a single meter on a house. Jeromy Johnson, a Silicon Valley software consultant, was residing in San Francisco when a large meter bank was installed one day below his apartment. Johnson appears in a Tedx lecture recounting his ordeal of experience an onset of severe headaches, tinnitus (ringing in the ears) and frequent heart palpations following that installation. After doing some research, he identified the source of his maladies and was diagnosed by his physician with EMF Hypersensitivity Syndrome (EHS). Unable to stay in his apartment, he moved his residence to a tent away from urban areas for the time it took him to recover.
In addition to spewing out RF radiation, Smart meters have also spawned more than a few house fires, usually within a week or two of being attached to the service panel. Despite their high energy output and in-line connection to the utility main, there's no requirement for these devices to be UL listed. As such, many utility companies refuse to accept liability for the damage, and courts have generally sided with them to date.
So what is a Smart meter designed to do? In a typical set-up, the device sends its data via a relay race, hopscotching down the street through several neighbors' homes. At the last home in the chain, the combined data from each household then transmits to a wireless router mounted in the neighborhood (e.g. on a utility pole). The router then forwards the information to a data center that's managed by the utility company. Many gas and water meters have also made the transition to Smart meters.
Opponents of Smart meters point out that investored-owned utilities are free to sell their customer data to private data mining companies. Of course, no one's interested in buying a copy of a ratepayer's monthly bill, which brings us back to the mystery of why thousands of signals are propagated by a Smart meter each day. Perhaps you may remember hearing about the Internet of Things (IOT) a few years back. The IOT represents a government-corporate joint venture in which the next generation of consumer appliances and electronics will all be as "smart" as a Smart meter. All of these products are equipped with computers that receive instructions from either a mobile phone or a centralized electronics hub in the home responds to voice commands. Unfortunately, people living in the home may not be the only ones privvy to what's going on.
That's because both the Smart meter and IOT are part of an even bigger venture called the new national Smart Grid. This multi-billion dollar project was approved during the Obama Administration and financed by U.S. taxpayers. Why, you may ask, is the federal government funding the operation of investor-owned utility companies and people's washing machines? It seems that numerous sensors have been loaded onto Smart appliances, scanning for light, motion, temperature, sound and possibly other things. Some sensors are designed in part to read optical scan codes on your grocery products. Others apparently have the capacity to monitor the biomedical characteristics of your body.
All of this data is collected and then relayed to the Smart meter, which then forwards it to the data center managed by the utility company. It's all this information that data mining companies are willing to purchase. In addition, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Intelligence Community will have access to your data as well. Incredibly, the fact that DHS will be able to spy on people in their homes has yet to raise many eyebrows in Congress.
Of course, federal officials offer a much different explanation for what's going on here. According to the Department of Energy, the stated mission of the Smart Grid is to increase energy efficiency and integrate alternative energy sources (solar, wind, etc.) into a long neglected, nationwide electrical infrastructure. While this sounds like a good idea, in reality the actual grid which is still in shambles throughout much of the nation - is not being renovated or updated at all by this project. And instead of lowering consumer bills, the charges are going up, according to customers who've had Smart meters installed.
"A smart meter is a good example of an enabling Smart Grid technology that can empower both utilities and consumers to extract value from two-way communications and real-time access to usage data," a DOE press release states. To do this, the Smart Grid will also carry broadband radio communication by coupling RF waves onto the utility power line. In other words, the signal is piggy-backed onto the 60-hertz AC electricity delivered to your home, whether you want it or not.
To learn more about the use of Smart devices in population surveillance, check out Shoshana Zuboff's book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. A professor emeritus of the Harvard Business School, Zuboff describes what's known as the "human futures market" in an interview for the radio broadcast On The Media in December, 2020..
The next generation of wireless transmission, 5G, is likewise coming soon to a neighborhood near you. As mentioned above, new mobile phones and other wireless devices will operate at over twice the current 2.4 gigahertz frequency of 4G. Meanwhile, new wireless technologies, like autonomous driving, will operate at 5.8 gigahertz. That's nearly six billion waves per second. And since wavelength size decreases as frequency rises, this means 5G will be using really small waves about a millimeter in length. Such tiny waves are unable to penetrate certain materials, such as walls. Practically speaking, this means the half million cell towers perched across the American landscape today can't be used to send 5G signals.
Instead, an entirely new infrastructure is being installed, one that places much smaller antennas at frequent intervals along streets, atop bus shelters and buildings. (There are also some towers going up to propagate 5G.) Even then, it will be a slog for these waves to reach devices inside buildings. Like superballs, however, the waves gain force by ricocheting off walls and other hard services, allowing them to bounce repeatedly until they reach their destination (e.g. your router or phone).
To understand the potential health risk of the 5G scenario, picture these millimeter waves passing through you constantly as they bounce along. Each pass-through represents a tiny shock to human cells, a sort of "walls of Jericho" effect, since electric pulses in cells function according to a much different biorhythm. The tiny wavelength associated with 5G presents other health risks as well. A 2018 study in the International Journal of Hygiene and Environmental Health found that:
Direct energy weapons have also been associated with the Havana Syndrome, in which American diplomats developed mysterious health complications while on assignment in Russia, China and Cuba.
To learn more about how 5G works, here's a video made by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE):
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