Earlier quoted context omitted.
A state (or a carrier, in theory), doesn't need RCEs to do this. In every phone, the "actual phone", what talks to cell towers, is a separate system called the Baseband. It is a full computer, storage, memory, encryption, ... and it is under the control of carriers and through them of law enforcement and the like. It is also where the microphone and mostly the cameras are connected. The baseband then passes them thro…
>and it is under the control of carriers No, the only part where carriers can run arbitrary code is on the sim card, which can only run javacard applets. >It can also transmit audio and video when the phone is not actually in a call. Source? AFAIK both iPhones and Pixels have discrete modems, which means the baseband is separated from the main processor and communicates with it via some sort of bus. It's unclear how…
This includes the power to upload code to decide which channels and timing to use.
Then it was decided to use this for law enforcement, and so audio was routed through the baseband. Other things were for carriers, like SMS management (including deleting SMS that were already shown to the user). Both to prevent apps from listening without the baseband's agreement AND to listen in without agreement from the apps.
The limit on this is that there's already many different basebands, and of course neither carriers nor states could be bothered to actually implement the backend necessary. I'd bet good money the NSA has one though.