Do you really think that's anything like the scenario being proposed?

Here's what I think would be a closer analogy to what's actually being proposed: the water company installs a smart meter allowing them to read usage data more frequently. They randomly sample 2% of customers' data and prepare a histogram showing the top daily usage hours and total usage over a monthly period.

The water company already has a connection to you (the pipe) and the smart meater measures that connection. The smart meter does not collect information how you use that water inside your house. This analogy would match a website collecting anonymous usage statistics for connections but would not match an otherwise offline program making connections to collect data.

Yes, that’s why I think it’s a close fit for what Russ proposed rather than the more outlandish conspiracies circulating in social media.

A more apt analogy would be a sensor which anonymously reports if a pipe starts leaking so the manufacturer has a sense of their failure rate.