Newbie grower/poster paranoia

Two quick questions. i can be a paranoid individual at times, n itd give me pc of mind if these could be aswered.

1 Ive heard stories of helicopters flying over houses w/ infrared tech looking for indoor gardens, as well as electricity companies watching for strange usage patterns. (maybe a little far-fetched, i admit, but stuff like this sometimes bounces around in my head. specially if ive smoked too much.) i live right outside a large urban city in the US, so the authorities in my area may have the funding to do something like this. how truthfull are these little urban legends?

2 "By clicking the agree button you confirm that you do not work or are associated with any government agency, and information obtained through this site will be inadmissible in a court of law." thats a bit from the legal shit u agree on before joinin. if a fed was to simply read, as a guest, personal info of somebody on here and never join, would that statement apply to them at all? how safe is posting info on here, actually?

I cant imagine uncle sam picking on me for havin a few plants in my basement when in rural areas ppl are growin fields, but i like to know what im doing.

thx in advance for any help

preoQpydDlusion said:

1 Ive heard stories of helicopters flying over houses w/ infrared tech looking for indoor gardens, as well as electricity companies watching for strange usage patterns. (maybe a little far-fetched, i admit, but stuff like this sometimes bounces around in my head. specially if ive smoked too much.) i live right outside a large urban city in the US, so the authorities in my area may have the funding to do something like this. how truthfull are these little urban legends?

Click to expand...

Regarding the first point, although I don't know that much about US law, I do know that a US Supreme Court Judge ruled that FLIR systems (forward looking infrared) as used on helicopters and hand held devices used on the ground for detecting heat signatures in private residences as used by law enforcement officals was an unlawful intrusion of privacy and a violation of of an individuals civil liberties, and as such was not lawful and therefore could not be used as incriminating evidence in a court of law.

You might want to check on it, but that's my understanding at the current time. That doesn't mean that law enforcement cannot use such devices for identifying potential targets for further investigation by other means, it simply means they cannot use that information as evidence for getting a search warrant or 'probable cause'. There are ways around it to relieve the paranoia, use ADF foil to line your grow space - this blocks heat signatures.

Electric useage is something else and can and has been used to identify and catch people, but usually in fairly extreme examples, for example a whole house being used for a commerical operation. The amount of electric useage for an average personal, half a dozen plant grow in an average dwelling isn't going to start flagging up electrical companies as long as you're sensible about things and don't start installing half a dozen 1000w HID lamps on 24/7.

An often used and useful way people get around increased electric useage is to offset the increased wattage by decreasing electrical useage elsewhere. For example, if your house uses half a dozen 100w incandescent bulbs at various times, replace them all with 20w energy saver bulbs. Lets say you use your 6 100w incandescents on average 4 hours per night per week, that's 600w x 4 hours x 7 = 16.8 kilowatts per week. Replacing them with 6 x 20w energy savers would equal (120w x 4 x 7) = 3.3 kilowatts per week, that's an instant saving of 13.5 kilowatts per week which can be used to offset the electrical useage on your HID bulbs. Another example might be heating with electric fan heaters - switch to oil filled radiators, or boiling water in the kettle - switch to gas hob ones etc They're simple examples but illustrate how you can offset electricity costs to avoid large changes in electricty consumption.

Use the anti-detection foil. This jams the governments signals so they can't use their infra-red tech to look into your house. That is why it comes in big sheets so people can wrap their houses.

You can throw them off on your electric use by running a extension cord to your neighbors house.

Remember the signal to other growers. It's the Italian flag. Fly it on the left side of your front door.

I never go out without my tinfoil-lined cap.
Don't trust anybody on the net. Learn enough to know when something is right. It's easy to be anonymous. But it's not easy to be a mouse.