The article addresses this head on. Even though those users once consented to share data “It’s not expected that human beings are going to be reviewing the raw footage.”

The meat of the article is that what technology and tech companies are doing is divorced from the expectations that we have as a society.

It couldn’t have been done from any roomba, but it could happen to almost everyone who didn’t understand the exact ramifications (which we click through several of every year to try to get the vacuum up and running). That’s why a lot of ppl on HN put masking tape over their laptop webcam. Or are you calling those people paranoid?

how did we get to the point where people have Internet-connected cameras and microphones everywhere in their houses yet implicitly trust that anything recorded will never under any circumstances be viewed by another human being

I think the second part of your sentence is a least a partial answer to your first part.

Couldn't it have been? after all they can remotely update the firmware. They just weren't in this case.