The other day, we were reviewing the comments on this site and we noticed one that just didn’t seem right, in response to our post about smart meters killing bees in Irvine, CA.

It read:

Of course ! Bees die and it MUST be the smart meters ! It couldn’t have anything to do with the pesticides your neighbour uses in her garden to get rid of those pesky aphids ( or anything else ) …

We looked at the IP address of the sender and it turned out to be….

Author : Concerned Rational Citizen (IP: 74.121.22.10 , edge-gw-rwc.silverspringnet.com)

E-mail : somewhereincali@yahoo.com

Whois : http://whois.arin.net/rest/ip/74.121.22.10

Silver Spring Networks is a Redwood City, CA based firm that designs and manufactures wireless networks for a variety of smart meter manufacturers. They filed in July for a $150m initial public offering of stock, hoping to make money out of misery as we reported in February.

Now, we’re no stranger to smart grid industry types posing as members of the general public in order to attempt to undermine our growing movement. William Devereaux lost his job at PG&E as Senior Director of their SmartMeter program in November of 2010 for infiltrating our website and discussion groups under an assumed name, Ralph Florea.

It’s pretty staggering that others in the industry haven’t learned their lesson from “Ralph” and continue to falsify their identities and plant comments online. These are tech guys we’re talking about so their apparent ignorance of IP addresses is doubly impressive. If they can’t figure out how to effectively post an anonymous comment online, how do we expect them to keep intimate details of our private lives from hackers or to keep our energy grid running smoothly?

Why are smart grid companies like Silver Spring continuing to plant comments? Maybe it’s because the public is becoming more and more firmly entrenched against the smart grid. In the run up to their IPO, Silver Spring is desperately trying to manufacture public support for their stupid meters because it is- for the most part- entirely lacking. (Headaches, house fires, and privacy invasion apparently rank low on the list of popular pastimes). This is commonly called “astroturfing.”

One might ask why PG&E or SCE or Silver Spring Networks don’t have the guts to come out and publicly debate us- why they have to hide in anonymous postings on our site, instead of discussing policy issues in public like adults. So, come on Silver Spring Networks. If you are so confident your wireless transmitters are safe, let’s have a public debate about it. Let’s invite the experts on both sides and have good old fashioned public hearing.

My guess is that’s not going to happen. Light is the last thing they want to be shed on their deception, their corruption, and perhaps most worryingly, their stupidity.

Here is the contact information attached to the IP address that sent the comment- perhaps you can ask them why they are afraid of an open public debate…

http://whois.arin.net/rest/poc/SNE109-ARIN

Phone

+1-650-363-5240 (Fax)

+1-650-298-4200 (Office)

+1-650-780-4610 (Office)

Email

vince.muir@silverspringnet.com

pgurumur@gmail.com

Company

Silver Spring Networks

555 Broadway Street

Redwood City, CA 95135