https://xkcd.com/936/

But when China steals all their (arguably not copywrite-able) work…

TLDR:

They found debugging commands that can be used to access the memory of the device over USB. This is as much a backdoor as any device that runs unsigned firmware

Unless you store secret files on your Bluetooth dongle, you shouldn’t have to worry about this.

If it’s not running on the cloud, I can always just stay on an old version. If it’s open source, that old version can be maintained and updated indefinitely.

Use unidentifiable backgrounds or remove them in post. I’d suggest small patches of sand, dirt or grass, walls, etc. Avoid anything that can be found on a map like mountains (and other large scale topography), buildings, power lines, etc.