To elobarate on that, the hurdles for monitoring employees are really high. It is always illegal to do it secretly and conversations etc are considered private even if you're in the office and talk with collegues. Also worker's councils hate that stuff and a company would have a really bad time with theirs.

Exactly this... There are numerous stories of people having their boss call them and ask them about something they're doing that they would only know if watching on video. Apparently this was somewhat common as remote work became common among during COVID where women employees would have their boss spy on them remotely via video and they would realize it because the boss would say some offhanded comment that they wouldn't have known if they weren't watching through the webcam.

I do not use my work computer for much outside of work... However, when traveling for work or other times I will 100% do personal things on my computer. Even though I'm devops/sysadmin and had admin rights to disable applications from accessing my macbooks webcam I knew they could override it at anytime they wanted. So I also purchased covers for the webcam & never trusted that I wasn't being spied on via microphone. But any company that does that stuff is just terrible and it's not the way to get the best out of your employees. I am much more likely to put in a lot of extra time outside of work if I can mix in my personal browsing with my work.