I know I am being naive, but what I can do? A normal used that is wants privacy?

I expected some Volkswagen like defeat device to in phones to evade security audit.

But what can "I" do, considering that the bodies & Govt that are suppose to do something are busy stuffing their own pockets and busy with petty politics.

Open-source hardware progress is very slow and low RAM. How safe will I be if I just run LineageOS on a Xiaomi device?