I agree with you. When I said laptop, I assumed the monitoring of whatever signals go through it. I would hope that no one would suggest monitoring of external environment at my place.

For example, teams/zoom call? Go nuts. Screen shots of laptop screen. Go for it. Chat. Fine. Listening in to me jacking off to dwarf porn? Not cool.

I still see it as mostly useless. And I am saying this as a person, who worked at a place that had 'bathroom break' policy. The most annoying thing about it.. it was used as a tool to get rid of people management did not like.