Many of you will have heard me talk before about the lovely and wonderful Dr Olle Johansson, one of the leading academic scientists fighting the electrosensitivity cause and one of the authors of the Biotinitiative Report. (For the un-initiated – A Rationale for Biologically-based Public Exposure Standards for Electromagnetic Fields)
Apart from producing endless papers and reports, speaking all over the world and being on everyone’s interview list, he runs an unofficial one-man news agency, dispersing emails on (mainly) ES related topics to his huge mailing list, on which I am fortunate enough to be. And among this week’s batch was the following:
I have been away for a few days visiting Amsterdam. (To be electrohypersensitive in The Netherlands is not easy, trust me.)
I also spent a few hours during my visit at the Anne Frank House, located on the Prinsengracht canal in Amsterdam. It was in the Achterhuis (Dutch for “back house”) or Secret Annex that Anne Frank and her family hid. It is the rear extension of the building, concealed from view by houses on all four sides of a quadrangle. Though the total amount of floor space in the inhabited rooms came to only about 500 square feet (46 square meter), Anne Frank wrote in her diary that it was relatively luxurious compared to other hiding places they had heard about. They remained hidden here for two years and one month until they were anonymously betrayed to the Nazi authorities, arrested, and deported to their deaths in concentration camps.
When I walked through the museum I learnt that they had (in the evenings and very early mornings) access to water, a gas stove and some electricity for single light bulbs. While standing in the kitchen I suddenly realized that if this had been today, the Frank family would not have stood a single chance; they would have been caught within a few hours. Why? Well, the very moment they would have used the water tap above the kitchen sink, or put on the gas stove, or lit the electric light, the water, gas, and electricity smart meters of the building would immediately have signalled additional use to the Gestapo. The Gestapo would have loved smart meters!!
Its the ongoing privacy versus openness debate. Does it matter that the ‘authorities’ have access to your information when you are doing nothing wrong and the ‘authorities’ are looking after your best interests. In a Utopian world the answer should be no. But unfortunately the world we live in will never be Utopian or anything close to it, so smart meters do matter for much more than the electro-smog they generate.