Like most things, the harms of closed-source {firm,soft}ware fall on a spectrum, and a black-and-white absolutist view is impractical and demagogical. When the

Like most things, the harms of closed-source {firm,soft}ware fall on a spectrum, and a black-and-white absolutist view is impractical and demagogical. When the harms of closed-source are high and hard to detect via other means (e.g. Dieselgate, like you mention), I agree that said firmware should be auditable. Maybe even for things like network cards, although in that case it would be very easy to detect any spy traffic via network traffic analyzers, and any company caught shipping network cards with embedded spy firmware would cause a news sensation and be immediately driven out of business. But when the harms are low-to-none, I'm not sure what good your proposed legislation would do. In the case of the headphones, the best argument you present against closed-source firmware is literally a joke about subliminal messaging.