I agree with you in principle, but I think the Nest actually only includes a hidden microphone, not a hidden camera.
A gun to your head is a threat of violence - that’s the criminal act. Threatening murder is a crime in itself.
The crime of wiretapping would be secretly listening/recording (and willfully so, not by accident as e.g. when baby monitors cross-talk). Having an inactive piece of hardware present, with no intention of using it for spying, is not a crime.
Having the hardware present is extremely unlikely to be nefarious. It could have been (a probably was) future-proofing. It could be a bundled package (unlikely I think for a mic, but you e.g. pretty much can’t buy cheap motion sensors without temp and luminosity bundled, so things like Philips Hue motion sensors measure temperature too).
Yes gun to the head is the extreme example, that's the point. Not switching it on does not absolve you of guilt. Same thing here.
That is an entirely reasonable point of view and argument. If you really do find it stupid and/or dishonest reflect on that.
If there is no law against putting secret wire taps in people's houses "by mistake" and claiming it wasn't switched on there should be because ethically its a crime worthy of the Stasi. I would prefer if we didn't have a turnkey solution to creation of a facist state of the kind the soviets could only dream of. Perhaps you like the idea? Ah but "google wouldn't" So there's no need for law surrounding google because they just wouldn't. I know some of the engineers and no way would they allow that.
Democracy deserves better defence. Even if the gun to your head is never fired and you don't know about it. Criminal. If the law says otherwise, change it.
Now I wonder if there is something you would like to disclose about your vested interests? Perhaps not. I'm old enough to remember smart and kind people being Soviet apologists then finding out later something approximating the truth to their revulsion. You don't have to be on the take to be an apologist. But there is a lot of defence of big silicon valley companies behaving badly around here and very little "Disclosure, I work for.." going on.
It also comes down to much you trust them that the microphone was disabled. If you don't, then you probably also shouldn't be carrying a smartphone with you either.
Part of my reason for blocking video is I can never figure out when videoconferencing tools will default to transmitting video, which I never want, before I have a way to turn it off.
Also, I don't think I'm a high profile enough target that somebody would bother sifting through everything I say in front of my laptop for something interesting.
Capturing images every minute or so and looking for something embarrassing (someone showing lots of skin) seems much easier for malware to automate.
The threat model is closer to automated transcription, global history search, and parallel construction.
But certainly no harm done in muffling or ripping out a mic if you're concerned!
[1] https://media.ccc.de/v/35c3-9941-how_facebook_tracks_you_on_...
They think the FBI is gonna sit and watch or listen to a recording. They have no idea this is gonna sit as text in a database forever to be searched against later.
https://www.davidsalomon.name/CompSec/auxiliary/KybdEmanatio...
It's easy and quick to put some tape over the webcam, so unless you use it all the time, there's very little reason not to to so.
Disabling the microphone is harder and maybe not worth the effort.