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Huh oh. As a committed anti-conspiracy-theorist for the "phones listen to your microphone and targeted ads based on what you say" thing I can tell this is going to be exhausting

Oh man, this is indeed one of those super prevalent and very hard to disprove conspiracy theories out there. I hear it all the time even from people who aren't normally into conspiracies.

It doesn't matter that it's a conspiracy theory or not... the issue is that state/capitalistic surveillance is **very doable** now, because engineers have been working on it for so many years. So whether it already happened or not, it's just a question of time We need to fight back now

What proactive measures do you suggest to stop a potential future phone-based audio surveillance?

I'd suggest one: Have the mobile OS (Android or iOS) display an indicator whenever any app is accessing the microphone. Apps should not be able to override this, but user should be able to add specific apps to allow lists to reduce noise. BlackBerry had this feature on their Android phones already.

I think iOS and Android both have this already - I'm sure iOS does

I'm not saying that "right now Apple and Google are doing it"... I'm saying it would be much easier than people thought to go into a generalized surveillance state... that's what Snowden (and others) have been warning us of for a long time... but of course people who are paid to build AI stuff /1

Right, I don't disagree at all. But do you have thoughts for how we make this less likely to happen?