[vikingerik]

It's cover-your-ass blame-avoidance, like most things that public entities do. It's the preemptive answer to "why didn't you stop this bad behavior", so they can be seen to have taken some measure against it. Any resulting misuse is out of scope.

[wodenokoto]

How is it cover-your-ass?

We had the recording but didn’t listen to it sounds worse than we can’t determine if that conversation actual took place on our vehicle.

[vintermann]

Oh, as long as they can show that they zealously reported people for talking about blowing up houses in Minecraft, they will be forgiven for not catching the people who talked about blowing up real houses. False positives can be a feature when what you're really after is displaying your zeal.

[vikingerik]

> False positives can be a feature when what you're really after is displaying your zeal.

Wow, that is an amazingly perfect description of so many things.

For another example: computer antivirus programs.

[lotsofpulp]

I do not see it as any different than individuals doing cover your ass blame avoidance too. See home cameras, dash camera, bicycle helmet cameras, etc.

[AnonCoward42]

Ignoring the scale the comparison might fit with some taxi driver installing the same thing and eavesdropping on the passengers, but the scale is quite important here. If some random hacker eavesdrop on your conversation, it might be bad but not necessarily detrimental for the whole society, however if this is done on mostly all people in a society, it's basically an abolishment of democracy with a delay.

Centralized eavesdropping of all conversations in public spaces is really bad.