macOS Monterey shows that Zoom continues to use mic regardless of being in call

The Chinese app called "genie" used with devices like cheap Merkury cameras, sold at places like Walmart for impossibly low prices and that livestream thru "Tuya" (which likely provides the inputs to China-based deep learning models) also does this on all Apple Silicon platforms. Yes, the "Terms" for that app would seem to allow for it, just like other Chinese apps: https://www.npr.org/2021/01/05/953515627/facial-recognition-... Such streams help China develop models that interpret emotions and behaviorally profile all types of people, not just Uyghurs: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57101248 They can also be used like https://www.aei.org/articles/chinas-olympics-app-is-pure-spy...

Pretty sure China has hacked all of the telecom companies to know which IPs (Tuya streams) would go with which Experian® profiles (https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/chinese-hackers-charged-in-...) too, though such a hack probably involves somethingStupid™ like keyboard firmware injected into customer service terminals at multi-provider offshore customer/provisioning centers. (Those account number to DHCP lease servers/loggers are probably the least protected part of the consumer networks...BigTech has erybody thinking it's about surveillance capitalism, when it's really about surveillance period.) Apple's iCloud Private Relay service doesn't help much here either, as "Tuya" can associate the Apple-device running the app with the IOT devices that are streaming through the "Tuya" platform, providing a pretty good estimation of the identity of the user of the app on the Apple-device (which, of course, can be passed along in realtime to other apps in the "Tuya" family, even as Private Relay is rotating the IP addresses, so long as the "genie" like app is running in the background enough to phone home with an IP update packet).