Makes me think of Intel's IME. It has legitimate uses on corporate desktops and servers. But when it makes its way to consumer desktops it runs face first into a massive conflict of interest.
IME's huge problem is its shroud of secrecy. The CPU can do just about anything on the bus, it has access to external ports, and the code it runs is encrypted.
From the viewpoint of a government agency, that's a tremendous surveillance enabler. It's really hard to imagine it's not been compromised.
