In May 2020, Sacramento, California, resident Alfonso Nguyen was alarmed when he found two agents of the Sacramento County Sheriff at his door, accusing him of illegally cultivating cannabis and demanding entry into his home. When Nguyen rejected the search and denied the accusation, a deputy allegedly called him a liar and threatened to arrest him.
That same year, the deputies of the same department, with their weapons drawn and that the oxen and the sirens smile, moved around the house of Brian Decker, another resident of Sacramento. The officers forced Decker to walk back in his house in just his underwear around 7 am while his neighbors watched. The deputies said he was also under suspicion that the cannabis of illegal cultivation.
Invasion of privacy snathers
According to a motion, the Electronic Frontier Foundation presented at the Superior Court of Sacramento last week, Nguyen and Decker are only two of more than 33,000 people from the Sacramento area that have been marked to the Sheriff Department by the Municipal District of Municipal Services of Sacramento, the region’s electricity supplier. Smud called customers to use what and department investigators said they were suspiciously high amounts of electricity that indicated that illegal cannabis agriculture.
The EFF, citing registries of researchers and SMUD, said that the public services company unilaterally analyzes the use of customer electricity in “thorough” detailed increases for every 15 minutes. When analysts identify patterns that consider probable signs of illegal grow, they notify Sheriff researchers. The EFF said that the practice violates the privacy protections guaranteed by federal and California governments and is looking for a court order that prohibits revelations without a court order.
“Smud’s revelations invade the privacy of customer houses,” EFF lawyers wrote in a Judicial document In support of the motion last week. “All exercise is the digital equivalent of a door -to -door search for an entire city. The home is in the ‘core’ of the protection of constitutional privacy.”
Contrary to the statements of SMUD researchers and the Sheriff that the illegal growing are probably precise, the EFF cited multiple examples in which they have been wrong. In the case of Decker, for example, SMUD analysts supposedly told researchers that their use of electricity indicated that “4 to 5 growth lights are being used [at his home] 7pm to 7am. Actually, said the EFF, someone at home was undermining the cryptocurrency.
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