> And it does seem there could be a fix here; you already have to give applications permission to access your mic and camera, and it seems there should be some way for an app to disable the orange dot once its permissions are elevated with opt-in by the user.
MacOS already has security mechanisms meant to prevent malware from e.g. installing a rootkit into the kernel, or reading keychain passwords - one of those mechanisms could be used to prevent programs from altering whatever setting controls "show orange notification dot" (which, in a sane design, would be opt-out - or, opt-in to "disable orange notification dot) on their own.
Hmmm, can you clarify what you mean by "malicious grants of permission"? Do you mean when a piece of software (malware, in this case) tells the OS to give it permission to hide the dot, when the user hasn't consented?
If that's the definition you're using - MacOS already guards against that, simply because the orange dot is already being implemented in software in a way that is difficult/impossible for ordinary programs to change (but is controllable by the OS). And, from what I understand, MacOS already has many settings that are OS-controlled - you can't do certain things without authenticating yourself to the OS, and neither can software on your behalf.
If that's not quite right, I'll have to ask you to elaborate on what scenario you're thinking of.
You allow the user to keep a whitelist of apps they already knew will be using the microphone/line-in/whatever audio source and when those apps use any audio source, don't display the orange dot.
Add another checkbox next to each app in Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> Privacy -> Microphone (and camera) that allows the app to bypass the indicator. Users would have to go to this pref pane and enable that checkbox themselves (with instructions from the app, probably).
