I’d guess that my emissions cheat code blob is “safe” since no one is looking. (That guess was wrong of course).
I’d guess that my fb app code, installed on billions of phones and scrutinized by researchers the world over isn’t going to be able to hide anything related to processing or transmitting speech recording surreptitiously.
Every significant national government has a major agency in charge of protecting the environment from harmful emissions with many paid engineers devoted to emissions testing.
None of the major national governments except Germany have an agency devoted to ensuring that devices do not en fringe on user privacy.
If you think that Volkswagen is a bad example take AstraZeneca [1]. No one had to prove that they had committed fraud by missmarketing their drugs. Much of the marketing material was publicly available. Everyone who knew the law, knew that they were breaking it.
Or perhaps you could look at Seimens, which outright bribed, using bags of cash, government officials, in order to close deals [2].
Moral of the story, corporations break laws.
If Facebook is listening to you using your phones microphone, that's not even illegal outside of Germany.
[1] http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Health/astrazeneca-pay-520-mi...
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/16/business/worldbusiness/16s...
