> I was thinking that the board might need to be larger, too, to make sure it couldn’t easily be transplanted.

Wouldn't that be costly from an assembly perspective? Economies of scale and all that.

Idk, this all seems much too spy-novel-esque for me. You could also install a hidden camera in the victim's room, or modify the phone to capture the video-out signal.

Apple is retaining ownership of the devices, as mentioned in the article. They are not for sale. The per-device cost is not hugely relevant.

It sounds like a spy novel because spies spy on people who use regular, everyday hardware. A rooted iPhone is an extremely useful tool to that end.

> It sounds like a spy novel because spies spy on people who use regular, everyday hardware. A rooted iPhone is an extremely useful tool to that end.

Do you know of any instances where this happened with devices that can be rooted? (Computers, most Android phones, iPhones vulnerable to Checkm8)

Barton Gellman wrote about this very thing happening to his iPad (remote jailbreak/root) when he was working with Snowden, in his book Dark Mirror.

The leveraging of Android malware for espionage (corporate and military both) is well-documented in the media.