This Isn’t a Smart Home. It’s a Surveillance Prison on Planet Bullshit

The Illusion of Convenience

Tech is marketed like a life coach crossed with a fairy godmother. A voice command does the chores. Lights dim. Heat rises. Coffee brews. So easy.

What is being sold is convenience. What is being built is infrastructure, a massive, invisible architecture of surveillance and control.

Your smart TV watches even when it looks off. Your doorbell films the sidewalk all day. Your thermostat tracks when you are home, when you leave, when you sleep, and how long you shower.

That information does not stay in your home. It travels. It is stored. It is sold. It is analyzed. It builds a profile, not just of you, but of your neighborhood and your routines.

You are not the user.
You are the product.
You are the sensor.
You are the signal.

Control Is the Quiet Core

This is not only about privacy. It is about power.

What happens when your locks, lights, car, appliances, and thermostat are owned or operated by companies you have never met, governed by terms you did not read, and subject to updates you did not authorize? What happens when your access to your own home can be revoked with a click?

We are building a digital police state, dressed up as a luxury upgrade.

I am not saying this from a bunker. I talk to my Alexa all day. I cover the camera when I am home, and I know that might be theater. I am not better than anyone reading this. I am inside it. We all are.

The point is not to be perfect.
The point is to be aware.

Data Is Thirsty, and the Well Is Drying

All this “smart” convenience costs more than autonomy. It burns resources.

Every voice command, video clip, and “play that song I like” runs through a data center, a warehouse of servers that must be cooled constantly. And how do they stay cool? Water. A lot of it.

Large data centers can use up to 5 million gallons of water per day for cooling—equivalent to what a small town might use (EESI). Data centers use water not only for cooling racks of servers, but also for humidity control and sometimes indirectly through the power plants that supply their electricity. The hidden cost of “Hey Siri, send a text” is not just a sliver of privacy—it is gallons of freshwater.

The Game Is Not a Game

Pokémon Go looked like a harmless nostalgia hit. The same with Ingress or Harry Potter: Wizards Unite. Fun on the surface, training data underneath. Augmented reality maps the physical world as you move.

Parks. Sidewalks. Storefronts. Apartment complexes. Human behavior. Movement patterns.

You thought you were catching Pikachu.
You were teaching the system how to see you.

Niantic confirmed that data from Ingress and Pokémon Go were scanned and used to build its large geospatial model, also called a Virtual Positioning System (VPS). Geospatial simply means data tied to real-world locations - maps of where things are, how people move through them, and how physical space can be modeled digitally. In other words, every game interaction became a training point for a 3-D map of the world.

And it does not stop there. Niantic’s games collect precise location data and user contributions like map tags, photos, and movement patterns. Legal actions have followed too. Property owners sued after players swarmed private lawns, privacy advocates flagged the sweeping permissions buried in Niantic’s terms, and critics noted that players had effectively granted the company far-reaching rights over data they did not realize they were giving away.

Meanwhile, doorbell cameras and “neighborhood” apps blanket streets, capturing visitors, deliveries, and passersby. Coverage becomes a mesh. Requests for footage become routine. The interface feels friendly or cheap, which makes opting in feel harmless. Behind the interface are data centers that drink water, hoard information, and feed systems of control most people do not understand, let alone consent to.

So What Do We Do?

We live in this system. No one is exempt. Awareness creates agency.

• Do not bring tech into your home that you would not want used against you.

• Unplug or disable what you can.

• Assume “off” may not be truly off.

• Question every “smart” upgrade.

• Prefer privacy-focused tools and settings.

• Support digital rights policy and watchdog groups.

• Pay attention, talk about it, and do not numb out.

You do not have to burn your phone in the woods.
You do have to know what you trade for comfort.

This is not a smart home. It is a surveillance prison on Planet Bullshit.
And we are paying rent with our data.