I wish my phone was just listening. It’s actually much worse https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43799802

Android has a button in the quick settings bar to enable/disable the microphone, which helps with this (as long as you trust the OS itself). I keep it disabled most of the time.

At least the phones, at least theoretically, will ask first and/or show an indicator when they're recording.

I remember years ago, when viruses were common, watching kids use computers...

OK

Install

Accept

[X]

Upgrade

and they never want to clear their cookies and lose their logins.

[dead]

We are already here. As the volume of code/technology increases, it should be clear that systems need strong permission boundaries. It is impossible to meaningfully audit all dependencies and services.

If my desktop music player has an exploit, it should not be possible that it can read my SSH keys. Node supply chain hacks keep occurring where your development environment can leak your private data. Mobile OS have this isolation already, but desktop is sure to slowly follow. I think we might eventually get to a point where even code libraries get assigned capabilities (eg libxml does not have network access).

That would start with not buying a literal spy device from Amazon.

Meh, your smartphone is already the ultimate spying device that comes with microphones and triangulates your location from 3 cell towers. The government doesn’t need more spyware than that.