I see your point Riley -- tho the hydro company can monitor usage, time of usage, level of usage, and make assumptions from those stats as to what they think you're doing (with the hydro).... as the fella in the video said: "grow ops" or "tapping into the grid", or excessive use of any kind could be construed or deemed illegal, and prompt authorities to come banging on your door. As to whether they breached your right to privacy might be an argument.
You can read many things into that part of the video.
Trusting people with your personal information isn't always the best thing to do these days either. Employees have access to all that kinds of stuff as part of their daily routine. We just hope it goes no further than their office and that someone doesn't hack their computers.
Not trying to be alarmist, but just trying to realize where we stand and what's really going on.
Tracking, snooping, skimming, even tracing where you visit on the web seems to be a daily activity of any number of people/companies including credit card companies, telephone companies, internet businesses (or hackers/spammers) ...... utility companies, and not to mention crooks.
Quite right Murray -- the video is concerning the US -- tho I doubt activities and legalities up here are much different.
An interesting subject tho isn't it.
C.