> You can't be certain that there's no way to activate it remotely without you knowing.
Ditto with every electronic device with a microphone: Smartphones, tablets, laptops, home phones, bluetooth in your car, Microsoft's Kinect, baby monitors, etc.
And while we're on an NSA paranoia trip, let's also remember that if you bounce a laser off of one of your windows it will allow them to pick up sound from within, plus signal leakage via the electrical grid, and of course unless you're in a faraday cage tons of EM leakage from everything you use.
> Ditto with every electronic device with a microphone: Smartphones, tablets, laptops, home phones, bluetooth in your car, Microsoft's Kinect, baby monitors, etc
While there's a lot of truth to this, that is no reason to go even further down that road. If it's wrong for laptops to be used to eavesdrop then it's insanity to install a seven-microphone listening station in your lounge.
Of course, you could be monitored by the laser bounced off your window, or by your EM leakage. But it is an order of magnitude cheaper and easier for the commercial/governmental entity to use your own voice-enabled communications device for their own purposes. The commercial/governmental data gathering dragnet has come to its current state because it works on devices and networking services that the consumers themselves have purchased.
This, a million time this. Actually reading stories like these, I wonder how big the market will be in 2020 for fully off-grid home solutions. If we proceed at the current rate with the IoT, cloud based storage of huge personal data sets, I feel that the future is brim.
You can't be certain that there's no way to activate it remotely without you knowing. Seven mikes in your lounge is an attractive nuisance.