Increased Power Usage Leads to Mistaken Pot Busts for Bitcoin Miners

c0lo writes "The Canadian town of Mission, BC has a bylaw that allows the town's Public Safety Inspection Team to search people's homes for grow ops if they are using more than 93 kWh of electricity per day. There have allegedly been reports floating in IRC of two different cases of police showing up at a Bitcoin miner's residence with a search warrant. Ohio police and the DEA file at least 60 subpoenas each month for energy-use records of people suspected of running an indoor pot growing operation. DEA Agent Anthony Marotta said high electricity usage does not always mean the residence is an indoor pot farm and has surprised federal agents. 'We thought it was a major grow operation ... but this guy had some kind of business involving computers. I don't know how many computer servers we found in his home.'"

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Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/0vTVA4kIGK8/Increased-Power-Usage-Leads-to-Mistaken-Pot-Busts-for-Bitcoin-Miners

CANON MEMC ELECTRONIC MATERIALS MICROSOFT MILLICOM INTL CELLULAR MOBILE TELESYSTEMS