[Hikikomori]

>You can already completely compromise the average user's privacy with an underprivileged process (nearly all of your personal information is accessible with zero privileges!), and you can already persist with administrator privileges (that is routinely given on Windows).

Most complaints about kernel level are indeed about privacy, and as you say a user space process can already do so much that this argument is moot. Most people are not aware or ignore it to fear monger because anything kernel sounds really bad.