If you’ve watched television at all in the past three weeks, chances are good you’ve seen one of the new ’smart grid’ commercials. This is supposed to be the latest and greatest thing, this technology that makes our power distribution system all Skynet-ish, which is somehow “progress.”
I’m not convinced. This is just another way for the government to exert control and force treehugger policies down our throat.
Beyond that, however, are the apparent security issues that exist with the ’smart grid,’ which seems too dumb to defend itself from hacker attacks. Well done, idiots. You make an idiot savant power grid that can balance your checkbook while calculating your power usage and frying an egg at the speed of light, but some bored propeller head in his basement can hack into it and muck up the works. What happens when, oh, I don’t know, a terrorist organization tries this? Unless we have Bruce Willis on standby the fix it, well, we’re in trouble.
Obama’s plans to accelerate the development of an electrical “smart grid” could leave the nation’s power supply dangerously vulnerable to attacks by computer hackers, security analysts are warning.
The “smart grid” is projected to be a nationwide system of automated meters and advanced sensors that integrates new alternative-energy sources with traditional power plants.
I could spend hours explaining why this grid is simply another measure of control, a way for the government to intrude further into our lives and forcibly enforce liberal and “green” power consumption rules. But honestly, I can get to that later; this post is just to show how stupid this plan is from a pure security standpoint.
Obama’s economic stimulus package allocates $4.5 billion to modernize the nation’s electricity system and put smart-grid technology on the fast track.
But creating a two-way line of communication between homes and the grid — however “smart” it may be — has its risks, experts say.
“With smart grid, anybody with an eBay account and $80 can go and buy a smart meter, reverse-engineer it and figure out how to attack the grid,” said Josh Pennell, president and CEO of IOActive, a technology research firm in Seattle, who testified before the Department of Homeland Security last week.
Good call, idiots. “Ooooh, let’s make a smart grid that provides us with this great back and forth between the power system and the user! What? Oh, what if the USER tries to come back up the stream? Uhhh, well we hadn’t thought of that…umm…well…umm…Hope and Change?”
