Wow.
In Norfolk, the Broadland District Council has spent over £30,000.00 to rent a thermal imaging plane to spy on people’s houses – not looking for the elusive British exhibitionist, but to see how the people are using their electricity. If you’re in Norfolk, UK and blasting your heat, lights, and other electrical gear, your house will exhibit a high heat signature. On the flip side, if you don’t have enough money to heat your home, your house will have a very low heat signature. They’re tracking that, too. This is a little Aldus Huxley for me. What do you think?
From an article at Consumer Energy Report:
“The project we put together was for a plane to go up on various nights flying strips of the district and taking pictures,” he said. “Through those images, a thermal image photograph can be created in which you can pick out individual properties which are losing a lot of heat.”
“We do a lot on domestic energy conservation already and realised it would be useful to see if any of the homes which were particularly hot were properties where people had not insulated their lofts.”
“We were also able to look at very cold properties and think we might have picked up people on low incomes who are not heating their homes because they cannot afford to.”
Critics are concerned, however, that the crackdown was just another example of local authorities extending their charter to poke their noses into every aspect of people’s lives.
Hmm.
