Smart meters can spy on TV viewing habits, researchers claim

IF your television was the only load in the house, then possibly they could 'fingerprint' the show by the consumption peaks and valleys. If you are like me and have a stupid surround system and have it pumping at 800 watts, yah it makes it easier to 'fingerprint' as the load transients become larger and more easy to identify and spot.

Typically though, the transient between a light and dark scene might be what 10 watts? A big surge of cannon fire maybe 100 watts for a normal person, but that surge might be here and gone before the meter does it's 'snapshot'. Let's not forget though that there are other loads running in the house as well. Any motor in the house, fridge, freezer, AC, ceiling fan etc is NOT going to run at a steady load. Your A/C while it may be drawing 2500 watts, can constantly vary by a good 100 watts or so and the variance is not symmetrical, or exactly 100 watts each variance. Your television or as I heard on one radio show which I once respected claim, 'electric toothbrush', will essentially get lost in the ocean of other devices.

Even devices that claim they can listen to the noise each device makes, noise can easily be filtered, and even then this requires YOU to plug the thing in somewhere to monitor it, so YOU have a say so on it's abilities. Even if the power company were to put something like this on your meter, run your TV through an ups or isolation transformer, throw off it's noise. I am sure that as devices like these roll out, you will see a market for 'noise generators' that will purposely put noise on your line to 'confuse big brother'. Just like the same companies that make radar guns, make radar detectors. It's just a matter of time to cash in on paranoia.