It’s easy to imagine that this higher level of easy surveillance is going to efficiently send others down the same path.
Search engines get given all sorts of data by people who give away medical data, financial data, crimes, both as victim and as perpetrator, past and present.
Social media interests give away data about people as well.
The internet is one giant intelligence tool and your every move, your every click gives away stuff.
In the 90's I had a Visual Basic addon AI which could work out who was typing at the keyboard. There was no need to have login screens and passwords, your typing pattern identified you.
Today smart phone's can tell if its you from the pressure of your finger, the surface area and shapes made by your finger as it moves around the screen. Again no need for login screens, but some people do know just how often women go through their partners smart phones! I'm surprised more women dont play poker!
This information wont be made known for a very long time if at all because not everyone on the planet is using the tech. If the true scale of surveillance was known, it would have to be broken to them gently as it could cause civil unrest.
Carte blanche access to peoples computers has been going on since the internet appeared.
How exactly does one know of one's phone is being snooped on?
You will definitely know when they tell you.
I know of sense.com but perhaps there are others?
For an easier approach, there are a bunch of wifi plugs that can report energy usage: https://www.androidcentral.com/which-smart-plugs-are-best-mo...
- amazon page (even if you buy from their website, they just order it to you off amazon): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08CJGPHL9/
- install instructions: https://gist.github.com/flaviut/93a1212c7b165c7674693a45ad52...
- source code: https://github.com/flaviut/esphome/tree/emporia-vue
You can also get any of a variety of temperature sensors (I like SensorPush) and stick one in the fridge to get a pretty good idea of how much it's running the compressor.
Another thing to look at if there's central forced-air heating/cooling may be whether it's set to have the fan always running. That can be useful in balancing temperatures between floors, but it's still a fan using electricity to move air.
I've been out of the space for a while, but the "sense" power monitor was new when I left. It claims to use AI so you can just monitor the mains and it will suss out what is using power.
There were a lot of our home customers who were very obsessed with power use (trying to get to net 0 with solar). There have to be forums for this...
If you are looking for the manual way. getting a kill-o-watt and attaching it to your outlet is one way to see one of the things that takes a lot of power. I have the "Belkin" version which I like because the display isn't near the outlet. I'd suggest fridge... In my case my fridge was a large % of my power bill. Any electric heat.
When the monthly cost gets up to a certain level, we clean the coils and it drops back down.
I ordered the additional sensor that I'll use for the heat pump and one more circuit and see if it does any better, if not, the Emporia seems reasonably priced for as many sensors as it has.
> It has an airtag (not an official supported use)
I'm surprised. That sounds like a great use for it, especially for a larger breed that runs fast.
Young Husky. Medium breed that can run far and sometimes doesn't listen (like a cat... but bigger)
They have pet trackers.. But I'm not sure if its because its transmitting a lot and its close to them on their collar.. In this case in on her going outside harness..
I often wonder about these services and if we can wrap them in enough privacy to make them feel safe to advanced users?
Which is fine by me. I'm just excited to have a way to get my cat back if she ever escapes outside.
We have a tracking collar for our dog. The actual tracker is around 1" x 2", and gives realtime reports via the cell network. it would be easy to use it to track a spouse or car or whatever.
Now, for tracking your cats around the house, I think that’s a better use of AirTags.
Obviously depends on how granular the smart metering is, but it sent chills down my spine.
https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/01/08/28c3-smart-meter...
Or perhaps they could correlate a person's anonymous internet activity with their use of electricity.
I think such things should be enshrined in law, however we've not reached that state with the law yet in most places - I don't think?
When I worked at a power monitoring startup (we monitored home power use, by individual circuit) this passive monitoring came up. And our CEO mentioned to his wife that she was home early.. "how did you know?" He saw the garage door circuit draw power... He was told he could keep his toys, but not to talk about them.
Our sales guy had a potential partners remote door installed. He noted one time the dog walker did a pretty short walk (the door opens where x minutes apart), and was wondering if he could mention it..
Passive monitoring is everywhere. Not just cell phones.