Can a hacker with a radio receiver intercept these signals to figure out when everyone is home or not? How heavily encrypted are these signals?

PG&E needs smart meters to get an accurate energy use profile. This allows it to purchase enegry in peak periods of use. However the question is whether PG&E can be trusted with our private data.

PG&E violated the public's trust when it poisoned the residents of Hinkley, CA with hexavalent chromium and then attempted to cover it up. The end result was that PG&E was forced to pay $333 Million to the residents of Hinkley, many who died because of PG&E's callous disregard of their welfare.

PG&E should have the meters but custody of the program must be subcontracted out to an ethical subcontractor who has not breached the public's trust. This subcontractor would have all transmissions encrypted. All residents would be able to create their own aliases and passwords all of which would be unknown to PG&E.

Why is this necessary?
1) You can't trust PG&E to do the right thing
2) We need to protect people's privacy
3) we need to keep PG&E strident environmentalist employees from mining this data and use it to target consumers who are not environmentally conscious enough in the eyes of those PG&E employees.
4) we want to prevent PG&E from instituting Tier energy pricing based on the time of day. This has an unfair effect on stay at home mothers [portion removed]. And it also has an unfair effect on the elderly.

OK, Hank, so because PG&E apparently flys black helicopters at night (piloted by environmentalists), they can't be trusted, so instead let's give it off to a sub who likely will use overseas labor to keep track of the info. Great idea!

Dear Dim Bulb Ideas,

Your tangent departs from the subject at hand. It may assuage your rage but please try to stay focused. This thread is about whether PG&E can be trusted with people's private data. Given its documented duplicitous past, as memorialized in California Court decisions, one can reasonably doubt PG&E's willingness to respect other people's privacy.

Mr. Lawrence's suggestion of having a third party, that specializes in data retention and security to control the power usage data is a valid one. Many companies, including my own, outsource their IT department.

Mr. Lawrence's suggestions are intended to protect the public from a few disturbed PG&E employees. Most respect other people's privacy rights but some are on an environmental jihad. They are so chauvanistic, that they would willing violate other people's privacy rights in pursuit of their environmental goals. These are the people who must not, under any circumstances, be provided access to their customers' private data.

Third party data retention also makes it more difficult for other parties to hack into the data if the third party identity is kept confidential, is an expert on data encryption and security, and maintains its data in an undisclosed location.

Dim Bulb Ideas, your xenophobic remarks are offensive and undermine your ability to garner support for your position.

Note, that Mr. Williams works in the medical sector. I believe he is an MD. And he says your hospital information is not secure.

News flash: It isn't secure. And it is probably full of errors. Mine sure was and probably still is.

So now instead of really saving money by going with single payer healthcare, Congress is talking about having a national record-keeping process. Yikes!

In the short term it will cost more, not less and the threat to privacy is immense.

I support single payer, but not the proposed IT system.

Take the time to read the easement on your property with PG&E. The Smart Meter may exceed the access granted in the easement. This is a Constitutional issue and how much do we want entities involved in our private property.

Do yourself a favor I live in a home with a smart meter I had generation one for over a year and in that year my bills doubled and PG&E said that there was nothing wrong with my meter and refused to test it even though I requested it. After going to the town hall meeting Senator Florez put together here in Bakersfield and speaking to the panel from PG&E and CPUC with a little nudge from the senator PG&E came out and tested my meter and my meter was running faster then it was suppose too. They installed generation 2 that same day and I have been monitoring my meter and the online reporting sense it has been install on Oct. 21st. as of today my reading on my meter says that I have used 238 kilowatts it started at zero when I go to the online daily reporting it is say that I used 493 kilowatts up to two days ago it does not report up to date reporting as of this very moment. So the reading PG&E is receiving and reporting on my bill is more than double of what my on-site meter reads and it is two days behind. This is a faulty system and is not working correctly I plan on Monday to contact my Senator and tell him what is going on with the new meter install then I plan on talking to the local tv stations about what I am experiencing with the new meter. PG&E Customers beware of this new meter!!

Go to google or you tube and look for free energy and see how stupid we all really are. CONCERNED

"If restaurants had Smart Meters, they'd charge you for how many times you chew before swallowing your food!"

I'm in Mountain View and there is definitely something wrong with the Smart Meters! We moved out to have our house totally renovated with energy efficient appliances, double paned windows, insulation, brand new furnace and installed a programmable thermostat that we keep on 64 during the day and 55 at night. Our usage dropped thanks to these energy saving techniques.
Introduce the installation of the PG&E $mart Meter (that's right, I spelled "smart" with a "$") It was put on without me knowing and the next month our alleged usage doubled!! I attributed this to being home for the holidays. But when we went back to full time work Jan when we're barely home and it went up even more than in Dec, I walked around to the side of the house and realized for the first time that they had installed the $mart meter on our house. February's bill was also high and we were trying to be very careful to conserve, apparently with no success.
So I get it...they're offering us ways to save by using energy during non-peak times. But as someone pointed out in an earlier post, what about the mom's on maternity leave or the elderly? Well, I suppose it's not too much to ask them to do their laundry and use the dishwasher after 9pm. The baby will wake them up or for elderly-maybe they got up to pee at that time anyway. "Well, since I'm up, this is the perfect time to wash those clothes!"

Charging differently by the hour is sort of like a restaurant charging you by how many times you chew before you swallow the food!!!!!!

I would urge people to formally complain on the California Public Utilities Commission website. I'm ALL for saving energy and going green, but not charging people for how many times they chew before swallowing!