Consumers are frighteningly amenable to reducing their security in favor of convenience. Often they are oblivious to the tradeoff altogether. Evidence of this trend has increased since 9/11, as increasingly paranoid legislation made its way through congress at the behest of corporate stakeholders. It should hardly be surprising that now, with the NSA privileged enough to be openly flaunting its surveillance, those same corporate stakeholders are investing in companies that sell listening devices to millions of Americans. I am making a paranoid argument, but it's not ungrounded, and certainly not surprising, because paranoia breeds paranoia. Pass paranoid legislation, face a paranoid populace. The American people are rightfully skeptical of their government.
Perhaps it sounds absurd to segment the world into the "populace" and "government," but did it sound absurd when you read those terms in high school history books? Over spans of centuries, politics is viewed in the same terms: the people, and the government. Maybe you and I do not think of ourselves in the context of centuries. But what about Barack Obama? Vladimir Putin? It seems logical to assume they see themselves in the context of world leaders past. Modern leaders occupy unprecedented seats of power over the largest populace ever. If they are internally comparing themselves to each other and their predecessors, then we have a problem. We cannot trust the world leaders, because they do not view themselves on the same level as us. Faced with an increasingly empowered and growing populace, they could react any way. We'll see.
(Yes, I'm trying to get on a list at the NSA. It's an experiment I'm doing. Hopefully I hit enough keywords today.)
[1] Yes, transmission is triggered on-chip, but who verifies every chip fabrication is performed using the same imprints? You think governments don't have factory floor managers in their pockets?