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.
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.
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.
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.