Can be interpreted both ways I guess. I mean that the mics output is to the world.

Only if they actually do something with the recordings so they’re heard. The Spooks have even testified that they literally have more data than they can work with, so it’s the intelligence equivalent of a 400-in-1 game cartridge where there may be 400 games, but most of them are junk and its so time consuming to find the good ones in the mix that you just give up on it altogether but still hang onto the cartridge just in case later you happen to find the one gem in there