Which is why i explicitly qualified that the smart stuff in question should only be smart to do its job ( e.g. a smoke detector to alarm you and the fire department, not to have a microphone and camera to spy on you), like the French smart electric meters, which only report consumption to the utility ans nothing else.
Except even if they can only do that, it's still possible to spy on the consumer's habits through their electricity consumption. What time do they sleep, are they really sick at home or did they they leave town, are they on holiday,...
And since they are connected to the internet, they're vulnerable to hacks, so this information could not only get into the hands of governments and energy companies, but all kinds of random people.
Btw in reality it's much worse than that. Many of the smart smoke detectors have microphones in them, which is a really smart idea. Sometimes companies even "forget" to tell the victims, er... I mean users about it: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/02/googles-nest-securit...
