Take Back Your Power (2013)

To me, this movie is perfection.

Blistering performances.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

There are legitimate concerns with smart meters about privacy, inept installations, usage transparency, hacking, and aggressive access to meter locations, but low-power non-ionizing radio photons aren't one of the real concerns. Unfortunately much of this documentary is fear mongering, paranoia, cynicism, confusion of correlation with causation, misinformation, and irrelevant association with other things.

This is a very alarming documentary about what radiation from so-called smart meters can do to your health and wealth. It's well presented, interesting and even entertaining. Fair and balanced? I don't know. Indeed, can there at this time be a fair and balanced take on this subject? I suggest the reader see this and make up his or her own mind, perhaps with a little added research.As for my opinion, I think in the midst of so much misinformation, partial information, propaganda, paid lies, emotional lies, ignorance--especially ignorance since most people really know little to nothing about the effects of electromagnetic radiation on living tissues--we need to look at the broader picture and concentrate on what we know.How can we know the truth? I'm not sure we can. But how many smart meters are in operation throughout the world? That can be estimated to a fair accuracy. But how many people suffer ill-health or even death because of these meters? That is the problem: that number cannot be even estimated confidently. Why? Because a causal trail would have to be established from the meters to the ailing persons AND other possible causes would have to be eliminated.So what do I think? My belief is that (1) some people may be more susceptible to EMRs than others, and (2) it may be the case that the electric companies have mistakenly in some cases installed meters that really are harmful to our health.Probably the most frightening case given in the documentary is not about smart meters. It is about two faculty members and one student at San Diego State University getting brain cancer at a single location, Nasatir Hall on campus. Was this a cancer cluster caused by something on or near the site (the documentary points to a nearby High Performance Wireless Research Network Tower) or was it just a coincidence? One of the faculty members and a student died in 2008; the other faculty member died in 1993.Okay, again what do I think? My belief is that a cancer cluster of three people 15 years apart (with no new cases since 2008) is probably a coincidence. There's a whole world of science, pseudoscience and conjecture about cancer clusters that the reader might want to research. The problem is two-fold: probabilistically proving cause is extremely difficult, and even if there is no single cause there will be cancer clusters arising purely by chance.As in many other aspects of the environment concerning our health the truth is very difficult to find because there will be research on both sides of any issue sponsored by people with a vested interest in one side or the other.However, just as with tobacco and climate change, eventually the truth will out. I am waiting. Meanwhile I am pleased that there is no smart meter on my home, although if there were I don't think I would worry about it. But maybe I would do more research and then maybe I would worry. Maybe not.Life is complicated and although I think this documentary is a bit over the top I think it is worth watching. In a way it's a good place to begin your research if you are worried about how electrical magnetic radiation may affect our health.--Dennis Littrell, author of "The World Is Not as We Think It Is"

OK, I am an electrical engineer. I am not a brilliant EE mostly I have worked with computers, but I understand electrical circuits and EM radiation.Looking around for something interesting to watch in Amazon Prime I came across "Take Back Your Power" (2013) and I actually thought I would watch it and find a lot of things in it that would be almost funny to me.There are several very important things in this documentary and whether or not there are some alarmist concerns about EM radiation or not, some of the subjects discussed in this documentary are very important.Such as the cavalier attitude Google CEO Eric Schmidt seems to have about everyone else's privacy. There are quite a few no less than chilling quotes from this entitled corporatist aristocrat that shows he thinks of the rest of the American population as cattle to be managed.The capabilities being engineered into the electrical grid are nothing short of totalitarian. Decades ago surveillance of the public was being planned and designed to either use the phone system or the electrical grid. The power grid centerpiece is the SMART meter, designed to keep tabs on appliances, anything that uses power in our house, and devices that can sense where we are and what we are doing, what we are saying and our facial expressions.No citizen of the US that I know of has ever had any opportunity or request to vote on any of these social systems, and yet they are being manufactured and deployed into our houses without our knowledge or consent.Another thing I never knew is that some scientists and inventors when they go to patent certain devices are being denied the right to patent their inventions based on national security. The implication in this documentary is that the government is representing the petroleum and nuclear industries who want to ensure we are all subject to having to buy, pay for and subsidize a nationwide grid that will power the "corporate system", in effect forcing Americans to become pawns in our power system, paying taxes to private energy producers through our energy bills, without any representation. We are all drafted to be in a lightweight slave army of consumers.It seems like a giant absurd conspiracy theory, but the information in this documentary as far as I can tell makes sense in much of what it says ... maybe not everything. It is at the least pointing out questions that we all should be thinking about, and coming to terms with.That is why I give this documentary a 10/10 and recommend it to anyone. Especially if you are on Amazon Prime ... it is free, there is not reason not to take a look at it. Even if as I did, take a short preview and if you think you will learn something, watch the whole thing.10/10

What a terrible documentary! It doesn't seem to know if it's about smart meters, cell phone towers, AC/DC converters, the government, big corporations, or any number of other things they don't understand and are therefore very scary, neither does it quite know if the problem is health issues, privacy issues, or again something else they don't understand and therefore find very scary. This joke of a documentary is wall to wall quote mines, straw man arguments, and bad science, it's so bad, the last time I watched anything on par with this it was a young Earth creationist promotional film. I have no doubt the tin-foil hat brigade will absolutely love this without spending a single second to bother actually researching the claims made here, or reading any of the studies that are quote mined (most of which aren't named, presumably for just that reason). I am sure there is corruption and greed at play here, but just making F.U.D. (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt) nonsense up isn't going to fix anything, in fact if anything it will just muddy the waters further. Seriously if you have even a basic understanding of the technology featured in this 'documentary' you will physically be able to feel your IQ dropping as you watch this rubbish.