I work on products that feature live monitoring capabilities. There's no connection to the monitoring side's microphone (or camera) — why would there be? I'm not sure why there would be for their products.

Whatever the cause, it sure sounds like it was a strange and unnerving experience.

Repossessing cars isn't societally harmful, quite the opposite in fact.

https://www.iarpa.gov/research-programs

Some are installed by private entities. Home Depot installs Flock cameras in their parking lots.

I assume their primary use case is combating organized retail theft rings, as companies like Target spend a great deal on this problem (to include famously having their own accredited crime lab).

Billionaires For Bush did it first, and better.