technology

The Internet and smartphones are not mystical devices.

Whether they're mystical or not is an entirely different conversation ;p

This is something you can independently confirm yourself very easily...

you are vastly understating how non-trivial this task is. or you are allowing your emotional desires to cloud your technical analysis.

teams of experts put in months at a time to assess only a fraction of the required scope. these experts are putting in so much time while admitting they couldn't achieve full coverage despite having financial backing & well trained teams. it's reasonably unlikely so many experts would dedicate so much time & resources if its such an easy thing to independently confirm.

if Camdat and ganymede were sitting with one of their nontechnical friends, and their friend says "hey my stock smart device which i only use with facebook and a few things seemed like it eavesdropped on my voice about <common product/brand>". and they swear they didn't reveal it via some other channel etc. blah blah we've all heard it many times.

if you, Camdat listed all the reasons why the same phenomena can likely be attributed to a variety of other surveillance and correlation methods, some of which are arguably at least as scary. i would likely agree with every single thing you said.

imo its wiser to leave it at that, rather than making the assertion its absolutely not happening, or getting frustrated with them for even wondering.