> I still don't connect to anything in the cloud, and I block call-home functionality in my firewall such as that of the Philips Hue

If you're blocking your Philips Hue Bridge from connecting to the cloud, and you're a Home Assistant user, why not install the ZHA module and connect your lamps directly to HA instead of the Hue Bridge? I've been wanting to do this myself, but the prospect of losing access to both the native Hue app and the Hue Disco app is making it a hard sell in my household :)