Smart Home Surveillance: Why I'm Making My House Dumb Again

I've been making my house “dumb” again, and this episode is about why.

After bringing back an old television, building a physical DVD collection, and cutting off appliances that want an internet connection, I started looking more closely at what "smart home" actually means for your privacy.

In a 2017 FTC (Federal Trade Commission) case, Vizio's software was found to have tracked second-by-second viewing across roughly 11 million televisions. The tracking pulled information from cable boxes, external streaming devices, DVD players, and over-the-air broadcasts.

Then there's the Amazon case, where children's voice recordings were kept indefinitely, and thousands of employees reportedly had access to Alexa users' recordings without a business need.

Convenience is how nearly all of this gets through the front door. Preheating an oven from an app sounds harmless until you ask what you're trading for it, and how many points of failure you've added to your household.

People are outraged about Flock cameras on the pole, then walk past a doorbell camera and a voice assistant to get to the couch.

That disconnect is the whole conversation.

You’ll Learn:

[0:00] Introduction

[3:15] Technology stopped serving us and started learning about us

[6:32] The Vizio case and second-by-second viewing data

[8:32] How voice assistants actually record and who listens

[10:08] Amazon kept children's voice recordings and geolocations

[13:35] The strange disconnect between Flock cameras and home devices

[16:48] Convenience is how all of this gets through the front door

[19:38] Backdoor upgrades and the two iPhones that failed the same day

Resources Mentioned:

VIZIO to Pay $2.2 Million to FTC, State of New Jersey to Settle Charges It Collected Viewing Histories on 11 Million Smart Televisions without Users' Consent by Federal Trade Commission | Article

FTC and DOJ Charge Amazon with Violating Children's Privacy Law by Keeping Kids' Alexa Voice Recordings Forever and Undermining Parents' Deletion Requests by Federal Trade Commission | Article

Your television knows what you watch. Your voice assistant is waiting for you to speak. Your doorbell can see who comes to your house. Even your refrigerator, washing machine, thermostat, and light bulbs can now be connected to the internet.

But have we ever stopped to ask why our homes need to know so much about us?

For most of our lives, appliances simply did their jobs. A television played a movie. A stove cooked dinner. A refrigerator kept food cold. Then somewhere along the way, everything became “smart,” and we started bringing internet-connected cameras, microphones, sensors, and data collection into some of the most private spaces in our lives.

In this episode, I’m digging into what our smart devices can actually collect, how voice assistants work, the history of smart TVs tracking viewing habits, and why I find it interesting that people are increasingly concerned about things like Flock cameras while many of us willingly surround ourselves with connected devices inside our own homes.

I’m also talking about why I’ve been moving in the opposite direction by bringing back older technology, physical media, offline appliances, and things that simply work without an account, an app, or a Wi-Fi connection.

This isn’t about getting rid of every piece of modern technology. It’s about asking whether everything in our homes really needs to be connected in the first place.

Because maybe a “dumb” house gives us a little more privacy, ownership, and independence than we realized.

Hello, and welcome back to the Gubba Homestead Podcast. I'm Gubba, a first-time homesteader following in the footsteps of my homesteading forebears. Here we talk about everything from homesteading and food preservation to natural living, preparedness, and everything in between. Today we're talking about why I'm making my house dumb again and why

I think more people might start doing the same.

Before we get into that, I want to thank the sponsor of today's podcast, which is my small skincare business, Arvoti. It all started with a single tallow balm I made for my dad, who was struggling with eczema. What began as one homemade balm has now grown into a full line of small-batch skincare, and today I get to help thousands of people simplify their skincare routines with ingredients they can actually recognize.

If you've been looking to upgrade your skincare routine, you can check out my handcrafted tallow balms, cleansing oils, facial serums, goat milk soaps, hair care, and more at Arvoti.com.

Now, let's get into today's episode.

Recently, I shared how I’ve been going backward with technology in my home. I brought an old television back into my life, started building a physical media collection, and have been intentionally returning to technology that doesn’t require me to constantly be connected. The response to that was fascinating because apparently I’m not the only person who misses when technology was simply a tool.

You used it, and then you walked away from it. Your television didn’t follow you around afterward. Your CD player didn’t build a profile of your music preferences. Your VCR didn’t need your email address. Your alarm clock didn’t want access to your contacts. Somewhere between then and now, technology stopped simply serving us and started learning about us, and I think that distinction deserves a much bigger conversation.

We hear constantly that data is valuable, but I don’t think most of us stop to consider just how much information can now originate inside our own homes. The Federal Trade Commission has been warning about the privacy implications of internet-connected devices for years because these devices can transmit information back to companies and potentially share or compile information for additional purposes.

Think about what that means on a household level. A connected thermostat can know patterns surrounding when your house is occupied and how you use your heating and cooling. A connected television can collect information surrounding viewing habits. A connected security system can contain cameras around your property. A voice assistant contains microphones.

Apps associated with smart devices can collect additional information depending on their permissions and privacy practices.

Individually, each piece of information might seem insignificant. Collectively, though, we are creating something previous generations never really had to think about: a home that can generate a digital trail simply through the ordinary act of living in it.

Smart televisions are one of my favorite examples because this isn’t hypothetical. In 2017, the FTC and New Jersey settled a case against Vizio involving approximately 11 million internet-connected televisions. According to the FTC complaint, software on those televisions collected second-by-second information about what people were watching.

And this wasn’t limited to what someone selected inside a streaming app. The FTC said the technology could identify viewing information coming from cable and broadband providers, set-top boxes, external streaming devices, DVD players and even over-the-air broadcasts. The complaint also alleged that the televisions collected other information, including IP addresses and nearby Wi-Fi access points. Vizio ultimately agreed to a $2.2 million settlement and requirements surrounding disclosure and consent.

I read things like that and suddenly my old television sitting there doing absolutely nothing except displaying the movie I put into it starts looking pretty incredible. It doesn't know what I watched yesterday. It doesn't care what I watch tomorrow. It can't communicate that information to anyone because it literally has nowhere to send it.

What we now call “dumb” technology used to have a privacy feature that was so ordinary nobody even thought to advertise it: it wasn't connected to anything.

Then we have voice assistants, and this is probably where people misunderstand the privacy conversation the most. I’m not going to tell you that every Alexa is continuously uploading every second of every conversation in your house, because that isn't an accurate description of how the technology is supposed to function. Though I secretly think it's actually doing that.

The device listens locally for its wake word, and when it believes that wake word has been spoken, it can begin recording and send the recording to company servers for processing. But even the FTC warns that voice assistants can mishear something that sounds like the wake word and begin recording when you weren't intending to interact with them. The FTC also notes that voice-assistant manufacturers have, in some circumstances, had employees listen to audio recordings to help improve their products.

Just stop and think about how bizarre that would have sounded thirty years ago. Imagine telling someone in 1995 that one day millions of people would voluntarily place internet-connected microphones throughout their homes so they could ask what the weather is instead of looking outside.

And there is a reason privacy advocates take those recordings seriously. In 2023, the FTC and Department of Justice brought a case against Amazon involving Alexa voice recordings and geolocation information. The FTC alleged that Amazon kept children's voice recordings indefinitely, failed to fully honor some deletion requests, retained certain geolocation information after users attempted to delete it, and used unlawfully retained data to help improve Alexa's algorithms.

According to the FTC, for at least a period of time, thousands of Amazon employees had access to Alexa users' voice recordings even though many did not have a business need for that access. Amazon agreed to a $25 million civil penalty and privacy-related requirements.

So when someone says, “Nobody cares what you're saying in your kitchen,” I think that completely misses the point. Privacy isn't based on whether some individual human finds your conversation interesting. The issue is that the infrastructure exists to capture, retain, process, analyze and sometimes use incredibly personal information generated inside a place that historically represented one of our most private spaces: our home.

That brings me to something I find particularly interesting right now, which is the enormous discussion surrounding Flock cameras. People are becoming increasingly aware of automated license-plate-reader networks that capture information about vehicles traveling through communities. Flock's network has generated controversy over privacy, access and potential misuse, and AP recently reported that the company is changing some safeguards amid nationwide backlash.

The changes include stronger auditing requirements for law-enforcement searches and a planned reduction in standard data retention from 30 days to seven days. More than 50 jurisdictions have ended relationships with Flock, according to the AP report, while supporters of the technology point to its usefulness in investigations and locating missing people.

I understand why this conversation is happening, and I think questions about who can access location-related information, how long it's stored and how it can be searched are incredibly important. But I also think there is a strange disconnect happening when we become outraged about cameras collecting information about our vehicles outside while barely questioning the network of connected devices we voluntarily bring inside.

Think about the average modern home. Someone can drive past a license-plate reader and be furious about being digitally observed, then pull into their driveway where an internet-connected doorbell camera is operating, walk into a house containing cloud-connected security cameras, ask a voice assistant a question, turn on a smart television, adjust a connected thermostat, check a connected baby monitor and open an app associated with another appliance.

These systems are obviously not identical, and I wouldn't pretend they are. A police-accessible license-plate database raises different questions from a smart refrigerator. But the larger cultural question underneath them is remarkably similar: when did constant data generation become so normal that we stopped noticing it?

We have become extremely concerned about surveillance when we can physically see the camera on the pole, yet much less concerned when the sensor is packaged inside something convenient, shiny and sitting on our kitchen counter.

And convenience is always the word, isn't it? That's how nearly all of this gets through the front door. You can check your refrigerator from the grocery store. You can preheat an oven through an app. You can tell a speaker to turn off the lights instead of walking across the room. You can start your washing machine from somewhere else.

Individually, these features sound harmless and sometimes genuinely useful. I'm not arguing that nobody should ever own a connected device. I'm asking whether we have developed a habit of accepting connectivity without requiring it to justify itself.

If I'm giving an appliance a pathway to the internet, potentially giving a company additional information about my household, creating another password, adding another piece of software that needs updating and creating another possible point of failure, I want to know what I'm actually getting in return. If the answer is that I don't have to walk eight feet to flip a light switch, maybe that's not a trade I need to make.

There is another side to this that goes beyond privacy, and that is ownership. This is one of the reasons I’ve fallen back in love with physical media. When I buy a DVD, it sits on my shelf. I don’t have to figure out which streaming service currently has it, pay another subscription, or wonder whether it will disappear from a digital library. I choose the movie, put it into the player, watch it, and turn it off. The relationship ends there. That simplicity has started feeling almost luxurious.

But this goes beyond DVDs and old televisions. I think it belongs in the preparedness conversation too. Self-sufficiency isn’t only about growing potatoes and storing water. What happens to your household when the internet goes down? Can your important appliances still function? Can you access information without your phone? Do you have physical books, printed photographs, offline entertainment and important information stored somewhere besides the cloud? The more dependent our homes become on outside servers and constant connectivity, the more points of failure we create.

And that’s why I don’t think returning to older technology is simply nostalgia. I use modern technology every day. I’m literally using it to make this podcast. I’m not trying to pretend the internet never happened. I just want technology to return to being a tool I choose to use instead of an environment I permanently live inside.

Are they turning us into a grid with the data centers? Something to think about.

Maybe digital self-reliance belongs on the modern homestead right alongside food preservation, gardening and learning old skills. It can mean keeping physical copies of things that matter, maintaining offline backups, choosing appliances that work without cloud services and questioning whether every new object we bring into our homes really needs an internet connection.

So yes, I’m making my house dumb again, and I think I’m going to keep going. My television doesn’t need to know me. My DVDs don’t need my email address. My books don’t track what I underline. My stove doesn’t know when I make dinner. My light switch doesn’t need a software update. And when the Wi-Fi goes out, none of them even notice.

We spent the last twenty years asking how many things we could possibly connect to the internet. Maybe it’s finally time to start asking how many of them never needed to be connected in the first place.