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Title: Smart Attack!
Author: Le Postillon
Language: en
Topics: Return Fire, smart meters, smart cities, technology, Grenoble, France, Linky, social engineering, internet of things, smart grids, sustainable development, gentrification
Notes: Translated for Return Fire vol.4 chap.2. To read the articles referenced throughout this text in [square brackets], PDFs of Return Fire and related publications can be read, downloaded and printed by visiting returnfire.noblogs.org or emailing returnfire@riseup.net

Le Postillon

Smart Attack!

[ed. – From #10 of Le Postillon, from the ‘European Silicon Valley’ of

Grenoble, France, Europe’s capital of technological development and so

subject to rampant gentrification as to remain attractive to

researchers, start-up creators and engineers. On the introduction of

Linky, the first three million should be fitted by the end of 2016, with

90% replacement of old meters (35 million) intended by 2020.

Installation will be compulsory for welfare recipients and any

insulating their homes. Bills will rise 10–20% due to new consumption

calculations. Linky contains R.F.I.D. chips (see the supplement to

Return Fire vol.3; Smarter Prison?); also, radio frequencies emitted are

linked to cancer, leukemia, etc. (not to mention the toxicity created in

their production) – all electrical appliances nearby to the units then

re-emit these radio frequencies. Following pilot schemes in southern

France, University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis researchers in 2015

recommended “incentive systems, smart tariffs, and technologies to

increase potential [user] behavior changes” to speed up adaptation.

Spain has made it mandatory for every household to have a smart-meter by

2018, other European nations like Italy and Poland already have many,

and the U.K. plans to deploy 50 million to all customers by 2021.]

We know that little children make up extraordinary stories for

themselves so they can live out the adventures that they don’t have in

real life. It’s the same process which makes the scientific and

political elites create “smart” objects. Looking at the expanding list

of these gadgets destined to become indispensable, or even compulsory –

from meters on fridges to textiles – you have to say that some of them

must be very needy individuals. Rather than inventing a smart newspaper,

Le Postillon here offers you a story – not extraordinary but all-too

real – telling the adventures of the Linky, the invention of the smart

city and the role of Grenoble in the coming of the smart revolution.

Presumably you’ve heard of Linky? No? Yes you have, remember, it’s that

so-called “smart” electricity meter. Which means, according to

Wikipedia, that they can “identify in a detailed and precise manner,

eventually in real time, the electricity consumption of a household, a

building or a business and communicate this by phone or power-line

communication (PLC) to the data administrator”. You’re wondering what

use that is? ERDF (Électricité Réseau Distribution France), the offshoot

of EDF [ed. – State-owned energy firm, largely nuclear] charged with

running the electricity distribution network in France, says: “Linky

will simplify your everyday life: services such as meter reading,

changes to the power level or switching on a supply will from now on be

carried out remotely and in under 24 hours. Linky makes it easy to

control your energy use thanks to more detailed information on your

consumption.” These new meters are in an “experimental stage” and have

[as of 2011] been installed in around 100,000 households in the Tours

area and 200,000 around Lyon. But soon you too will be able to have one,

for the outcome of the experiment was known even before it began. They

are therefore going to be rolled out across the whole of France. In the

end, 35 million households will be lucky enough to have a Linky.

Does Atos Origin mean anything to you? No? It’s a big company, though:

annual sales of 5 billion euros, 50,000 employees across the world[1] of

which 15,000 are in France. What do they do? ”We provide consulting,

systems integration and outsourcing services that help provide added

value to our clients’ IT systems. Our primary mission is to optimize the

use of new technologies in our customers’ IT systems and thus develop

with them a new generation of services.” Hmm... And what does that mean?

Basically, they devise and install IT systems for a variety of

“customers” ranging from oil companies to nuclear power stations by way

of the Olympic Games [ed. – see Return Fire vol.1 pg26]. And the

connection with Linky? It was Atos Origin who “landed the Linky project

with ERDF”. So they are in charge of creating and installing the meters.

Actually, we forgot to tell you that the boss of Atos Origin is a

certain Thierry Breton. That doesn’t ring a bell? Come on, you remember,

he’s the former Minister of the Economy, Finance and Industry, between

2005 and 2007 – in other words at the time when it was decided to launch

the Linky project. Things worked out rather well, didn’t they? “Thierry

Breton is thought to have negotiated an annual salary of 2.2 million

euros for his nomination to the position of President of Atos.

Additionally he is said to have also insisted that he should be

allocated 700,000 euros worth of low-priced stock options”.

(www.linformaticien.com, 26/10/2008) “The French IT company Atos Origin

more than tripled its net profit in 2010 to 116 million euros and

reported a ‘return to growth’, declaring itself ‘confident for 2011’.”

(Le Figaro, 16/02/2011).

So what’s all this got to do with Grenoble, you’re asking (because you

know that, as a Grenoble newspaper, Le Postillon only talks about

Grenoble)? To get Linky running, Atos Origin created a new subsidiary,

with the lovely name of Atos WorldGrid (great, eh?). This new subsidiary

is for now based in the charming and leafy Innovallée business zone at

Meylan. But it’s outgrowing its home and will soon be moving into the

new Grenoble district of Bouchayer-Viallet, in a building currently

under construction, where it will easily be able to accommodate its 700

‘collaborators’. And if you are looking for work, they are currently

recruiting ‘C++ designer/developers’ and ‘CMMS project leaders’. Which

means if you aren’t highly qualified, there’s no point applying.

If you like, we can get back to Linky.

For despite all the good intentions of ERDF and Atos Origin, the

experiment isn’t going as well as it could and, as ever in France,

moaning Minnies are making themselves heard. The list of complaints

raised by the first users on internet forums (such as Rebellyon.info) is

so long that we couldn’t fit it in here. So we will make do with summing

up a few of them, on a thematic basis.

– Money. The cost of the meters, ranging from 150 to 300 euros per

household, is apparently added to the electricity bill, in installments.

– Technical. The new meters are causing a lot of power cuts. “At the

slightest surge, it cuts out!” Some meters have even burst into flames a

few days or weeks after installation.

– Common sense. According to ERDF, the great plus point for the

“customers” is to be able to reduce their bills by closely monitoring

consumption, by reducing the use of heavy-consumption appliances or by

using them during off-peak times. But the meters that have been

installed don’t let you see the details of what you have consumed. To do

that, you have to get an extra “box” costing about 100 euros. Hardly

anyone is going to do this.

– Health. The smart meters are yet another electromagnetic source,

causing unknown [sic] effects on people’s health.

– Social. Everything can be done remotely (switching on the supply,

repairs...), which means fewer jobs and less human contact. The supply

can also be cut or reduced remotely, while previously it required a

visit from an engineer and thus a physical encounter with those whose

power he [sic] was supposed to be cutting off. Now it’s just a click

away.

– Freedom. “Information on energy consumption transmitted by the meters

is very detailed and reveals much about the occupants of any home, such

as their waking times, the time that they have a shower or when they use

certain appliances (oven, kettle, toaster)”. This is the very sensible

CNIL (Commission Nationale informatiques et Libertés) saying so. Even

according to several engineers, personal data is not secure and thus

easily used for policing or commercial purposes.

All of that doesn’t set you dreaming? That must be because you just

haven’t understood anything about Progress, The Future Life and smart

grids. About what? About smart grids, or “intelligent networks”. What?

“Smart grids use computer technology to optimise production and

distribution and to better co-ordinate supply and demand between

providers and consumers of electricity.”

Smart meters, like Linky in France, are thus one of the elements of the

smart grid. You’ve no doubt grasped that by “enabling better use of

energy” smart grids are supposed to be environmental and part of

“sustainable development”. But they have nothing to do with that

old-fashioned backward-looking environmentalism, which wanted us to

think about our consumption, steer us towards energy conservation and

encourage us to return to the age of the candle, the ballpoint pen and

the landline. Oh no, smart grids allow you to be “green” while

continuing to profit from all the joys of modern life, without

challenging your lifestyle but by reinforcing it: “In the light of the

explosion in energy demand, the time seems to have come to trade in our

old energy networks for communicating, intelligent and thus more

efficient systems”.

Even better, the smart grid boosts growth because the manufacture of

smart meters needs lots of energy, as do the central control systems. To

save energy, we have to use more. Smart grids – and more generally smart

energy – thus guarantee a rosy future for our splendid nuclear industry,

which has been having a rough ride of late. And, in any case, as

Innovallée Mag (Summer 2010) reminds us, “smart” is the future of the

world: “One thing is sure, however, and that is that the smart

revolution is underway! Tomorrow, the world around us will be riddled

with sensor networks, charged with communicating between themselves by

standard protocols and with sending their information in real time to a

more or less automated central control system. Welcome to the smart

world ruled by... distributed intelligence!”

Guess which city is piloting smart grid stuff? Bingo, you’ve got it! “As

a real local technological speciality, the smart grid has found in

Grenoble a space for innovation and experimentation,” the “CleanTech

Républic” website tells us. This site, whose slogan is “green innovation

at work”, simply loves the smart grid and more generally everything

which allows dosh to be made under the banner of “sustainable

development”. So a team of its “journalists” came to Grenoble to make

some “web-TV” with local actors on the theme of smart grids and smart

cities. The result is about as thrilling as a Soviet propaganda film. If

you ever look at the local press, you will already have read 9,522 times

that Grenoble is a “laboratory city”, “at the forefront of the latest

technology”, “where the world of tomorrow is being invented”. Well,

that‘s not wrong. Around nanotechnology, the loss leader which sells

Grenoble to the world of investors,[2] there are clustered a large

number of technological projects which are going to “revolutionise our

lives”, not in a messy and unpredictable way like the Arab Spring [ed. –

see Return Fire vol.2 pg87] but rather in a calculated way, planned and

organised by the political and scientific elites. For the greater

happiness of us all, of course, even if we are not asked for our opinion

beforehand. Among the advances are “Senscity”, a project from the

Minalogic business cluster in Grenoble involving our friends at Atos

Origin, which wants to establish a “city-scale Machine-to-Machine

eco-system”. You what? “The functioning of cities necessitates the

establishment of certain important services: waste management, public

lighting management, water management etc. The M2M [Machine-to-Machine]

provides solutions of supervision and control which allow us to optimise

these processes: it is thus a crucial element in the sustainable

development of the city”. You see, you mustn’t be afraid of control and

supervision because it’s good for sustainable development.

In any case, you are about to be plugged into all that because CleanTech

Républic tells us that the people of Grenoble are going to be guinea

pigs. “To respond to challenges like the rise in population or the

changes in its energy networks, the city of Grenoble is currently

preparing the roll-out of several big technological experiments within

its borders. Whether this consists of smart grid demonstrators or

eco-centres, these projects will involve elected officials, businesses,

universities and of course residents”. If you haven’t yet been

contacted, don’t worry, because you’ll soon be “mobilised”.

Are you wondering what tomorrow’s city will look like? Go and pay a

visit to Bouchayer-Viallet, to admire the “Les Reflets du Drac”

building. It’s true that, particularly close up, the aesthetics are

those of a prison. But the solar panels mounted on top and the bright

colours make it obvious that it’s actually an office block. This

building has got everything going for it: High Environmental Quality,

Low Consumption Building and... “double skin”.

Listen to how Florence Audouy, programme manager for Urbiparc (the

subsidiary of Bouygues Immobilier which constructed the building [ed. –

the wider company, incidentally, also builds prisons]) explains the

concept, still on the CleanTech Républic site: “The double skin was the

great idea of Jacques Ferrier [the architect]. The building has been

designed with an initial concrete skin which is very well insulated. But

he got round a number of constraints to attain the performance levels we

were targeting by proposing the option of a double skin on three sides

of the building: on the west, south and east sides there is a metal

frame with a mesh of perforated panels which fulfils four main

functions. First function: improving the thermal comfort of the building

(this double skin protects the envelope, prevents an overheating effect

in summer and reduces the consumption for cooling the building). Its

second role is to produce an umbrella effect; it acts as a sun-shade,

filters the light and provides light levels that are much more pleasant

for the people inside who are constantly working on computers and thus

have to protect themselves from direct sunlight.”

There you have just learnt that modern architecture protects fragile

human eyes from the scourge of the sun and allows them to spend all

their time in front of friendly screens rather than being assaulted by

the horror of natural rays. But what should be done with the sun, then?

“There are 1,000 square metres of solar panels on the building”,

Florence Audouy tells us. “The power is sold to the grid but represents

around 20% of consumption. It’s the equivalent of the energy needed to

light the building.”

And here you have just learned that this building actually uses lots of

energy (but it will be smart) and the solar element is just there to

make it look nice and friendly. What you don’t know yet is that the

building under construction for Atos Origin (see above) is called “Les

Reflets du Vercors”, that it is right next to “Les Reflets du Drac” and

that they look like two peas in a pod. The smart attitude is all about

uniformity!

You know how when politicians push ahead with their big schemes, they

are always worried about potential opposition which might scupper their

plans, even though they are acting for the good of the people? So it is

with Stéphane Siebert, who combines the role of sustainable development

assistant at Grenoble city council with that of deputy director of

research at the Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA),

and who says, still via CleanTech Républic: “What I find extremely

interesting in this approach, which I would term collaborative, is that

it allows the behavioural aspect to come into play. [...] Nobody today

knows how all these new forms of technology are going to be able to work

when they are available to thousands of users at the same time. We

absolutely need to have a full-scale demonstration, with real people, to

allow us to check that everything we have in mind works properly. [...]

Of course, the key to success is that people adhere to the approach.

And it is much easier to do that in a new district like La Caserne de

Bonne or La Presqu’île, because eventually we will see the arrival of a

massive number of new residents who have not yet been tied down by a

whole set of habits and commitments, which after a while make it too

complicated to change [...] Here, at the same time as offering people a

new way of living and a new place of work, we can offer them, in a far

easier way, a whole set of services for the use of energy and associated

means of transport”. See how smart the city of Grenoble is? Rather than

bothering real residents, it prefers creating new districts with new

residents who, seeing as they have just moved in, will be considerate

enough to keep their mouths shut. Once the experiment is “conclusive”,

then they can happily roll it out to the rest of the city and present

opponents with the old line that “it’s already happening over there”.

Handy, eh? That’s what participatory democracy is all about.

Don’t you find it impressive, how everything is now “interconnected”?

How, starting from one small object – the electricity meter – they can

reach the point of talking about new districts and smart cities [ed. –

see Return Fire vol.3 pg31], about the world of the day after tomorrow.

That’s always an important element in these projects, in the evolution

of the world, in progress: giving the impression that all this is

inevitable, that it is ordained from above, that we can do nothing about

it. You will point out that Linky stems from a European directive which

stipulates “that 80% of electricity meters must be smart by 2020 to

encourage competition and energy savings”. That’s true, but as we have

seen in this article, lots of promoters of Linky and the smart

revolution are active in your city, close to your home, in laboratories

or shady offices. And so? Imagine: if you were hostile to the

machine-world, if you resisted the incursion of electronic sensors and

chips into every area of social life, if you considered yourself

sufficiently “smart” to have no need of objects which identify

themselves as such, you could make use of this proximity to express your

disagreement. You could refuse to become a guinea pig for the “smart

city” and make your refusal public. In any case, it would be more

interesting than moaning about “this latest piece of rubbish” and

sounding off about “directives from Brussels” [ed. – seat of the

European Union], wouldn’t it? But then, of course, thanks to our little

story, you will have truly grasped all the many benefits we can expect

from Linky and the smart revolution.

[All non-sourced quotes come from the Linky, Atos Origin, Wikipedia or

CleanTech Républic websites.]

[1] ed. – Notorious in the U.K. for their privatised examination of

individuals’ eligibility for disability welfare. Also, as ‘Some Angry

People’ wrote after smashing up their offices in Nottingham for the

above reason near the time this article was written, “Atos are becoming

experts in the business of identifying groups to contain and exclude

them. They were one of the groups who tendered for the government’s ID

cards contracts...”

[2] ed. – ‘Minatec’, as of then the biggest European research centre for

micro- and nano-technologies (see Rebels Behind Bars; Let’s Relaunch the

Struggle Against Nocivity) – on top of military, surveillance, and

historically there also nuclear developments – is for example located in

the area. Around the time its opening was resisted, with an occupation

of the Isere town hall leaving damaged offices, Minatec staff transport

being blocked by flaming barricade or researchers being heckled and

pelted with eggs during their conferences, while there and also at an IT

firm computers were sabotaged. The inauguration itself, with the area in

a quasi-militarised state, saw rioting in the city, trashing of banks, a

firm producing R.F.I.D. (already in use in public transport tickets and

highways in Grenoble) and nano-tech, a work agency and police station.

Cars were burned and barricades raised against the police charge. The

Grenoble-Chambery electric line was sabotaged in three different points,

causing delays in electricity supplies. Some ‘Opponents of

Necrotechnology’ reported that “three issues of a fake magazine

pretending to be official propaganda promoting the new technologies have

been posted through the letterboxes of the city’s residents. The latest,

for example, talks about the supposed plans for a huge dome made of

nanotech materials which will enclose the alpine corridor between

Grenoble and Geneva for 120km, and where people will need chips embedded

in their body to enter. These magazines have caused a huge scandal

because so many people believed what they read – and then found out that

it wasn’t so far from the truth anyway.”