I also assume that as long as the car is in range of a 5G tower, the NSA is able to remotely activate the mic and modem to capture recordings, regardless of a person's location in the world and regardless of whether they're paying for service.

Ditto (eventually) for several other spy agencies around the world.

Given Apple's and Google's emphasis on security, I'm doubtful the same is happening for phones... but with targeted use of zero-days (assuming the right ones exist) it's at least possible in theory.

> the NSA is able to

Or, you know, your telco provider, who then bundles and sells such data in aggregation to third party services. They've been caught doing it with location services over and over; it wouldn't take much for them to include audio recordings, as long as they have their terms & conditions sorted out

Telco provider uses data from their towers. They don't transmit information from your phone.

Where in the car? Unplug /sever the antennas.

Modern cars use digital protocols which are similar to networking protocols; many devices share the same wires.

I don't think this applies to 5g antennas...