Samuel Gibbs, writing for The Guardian:

Privacy campaigners and open source developers are up in arms over the secret installing of Google software which is capable of listening in on conversations held in front of a computer.

First spotted by open source developers, the Chromium browser – the open source basis for Google’s Chrome – began remotely installing audio-snooping code that was capable of listening to users.

It was designed to support Chrome’s new “OK, Google” hotword detection – which makes the computer respond when you talk to it – but was installed, and, some users have claimed, it is activated on computers without their permission.

Some folks are calling this evil. I don’t think there’s any evil intent here, at least not on Google’s part. But the use of this approach to do evil is obvious.

My two cents: I think every computer manufacturer should include a switch to disable the microphone and camera, a switch that is impossible to override remotely.