Then I can give them permission to do so.
The OS should assume the worst from any application asking for access outside of itself, and let the user decide. I should be able to give it access, deny it access, or fake the results.

The problem here isn't what VAC is doing, the problem is that any app can do this without any oversight at all.

As a side note, anti-virus and anti-malware wouldn't be issues if we stopped this ridiculous idea that every app should have full and complete control of the user's system.

So your excuse is because this one application has a use you like, all OSs should allow ALL applications free reign.

This is a technical answer exploiting a security hole that shouldn't exist to try to prevent a social problem. If people stayed away from VAC in protest it wouldn't fix the underlying broken concept in every OS that says apps should have free reign over the system.

The problem here is not VAC, the problem is the OS allowing every single app unlimited access to the system, something we should not be allowing.

On a "sex-party" bus, the clients would explicitly NOT want the bus to have cameras, and, depending on the crowd, may or may not, want their own pictures. The OP wants the reverse, which tells me he either wants a blackmail bus, or he doesn't really expect anything that exciting to happen in the first place and just wants to play extortion with memories of a fun evening.

I can find arguments for everyone records, or nobody records, but the "we want our cameras and they can't have theirs" ideal shows the real motive here.

So you're ok with your word processor telling it's owners every website you've ever visited, and possibly your online banking info that was in your cache too while it's at it? how about your image viewer? that weather widget should be able to access every file on your computer and every register in memory too and phone it home, why not? after all, you gave it "explicit permission" (the same permission you gave VAC, a simple install, your OS didn't ask for more.)

The point is that whatever you think of this particular use, it just shows how we don't handle any form of security from the biggest threat on our computers, the apps we install. This SHOULD have come out when the first user installed it and his OS asked permission, instead it came out after people discovered it through other means. There's just no excuse for our OS (and I mean every common OS out there) allowing this by default for every single app.

The people and companies who write the apps don't trust us, so why do we continue to implicitly trust them?

Why would the famous person want to stop themselves from taking their own pictures while allowing their driver to do so? sorry, doesn't make sense.
This is not about preventing paparazzi, they can't get on the bus, tinted windows stop them just fine. This is about screwing over their own customers, plain and simple. Either they expect illicit behaviour on the bus and want to be the only ones with blackmail footage ("girls gone wild" or "coke snorting senator" or whatnot), or they simply want to profit by selling normal customers the only picture of their own fun times. Either way they're being dicks.

Nobody hiring a limo tells the driver to record them, and also wants a technical solution to stop them from taking their own pictures.

If it were anti-paparazzi they wouldn't be worried about cameras on the bus they'd be worried about cameras from the outside, this is easy, tinted windows. The combination of them looking to block cameras from their clients on the bus, combined with wanting to take their own pictures, tells me they just want to be jerks about the whole thing.

You want to have your own cameras capturing everything on board, but you want to prevent your guests from doing the same.
Best advice is to stop being a dick.

People use limousine buses for special events and parties. These are the times people most want to remember and are likely to want to take their own pictures. Preventing them from doing so (even if it were possible, which in your stated scenario seems dubious) would be a pretty dick move.

now try using it on a tablet without a keyboard... (you know, what it was ostensibly designed for) Work recently took away my XP laptop and replaced it with a windows 8 tablet... my productivity has halved... (and that's an optimistic estimate) our best guess is that some VP thought it would look cooler in front of customers if we were on tablets instead of laptops, never mind that we've lost most of our functionality.

All I ask is that the OS asks first. and ideally gives you the choice of allowing, denying, or faking the results.

If I want my email program to be able to load an attachment to forward, I'll tell it that's ok. If some random game wants to see what my browser did last I'll either deny, or give it false info. (I don't cheat, nor do I visit cheat sites, but I also don't think they have any right to know what sites I do visit)

Did your OS stop it from accessing random files on your hard drive until you gave it permission to do so? If not, are you saying that you have no problem with EVERY application on your computer having similar access to snoop through every file on your hard drive and tell whoever it likes?

Just because you happen to like what this one piece of software does, doesn't mean it isn't doing it in a way that should concern us about what our systems allow with no checks and balances.

In fact this report directly compares the leader of North Korea to a specific devout Christian who committed many atrocities just under a hundred years ago...

Actually the UN is very definitely favourable towards the US, the US has veto power, you hardly give that to someone you aren't favourable towards. The problem with the UN is that they are favourable towards TOO MANY people and gave out veto power to several countries who never agree. This ensures that the UN can never actually accomplish anything because they must get all veto powered countries to agree (something that simply doesn't happen)

For the UN to be effective they have to stop the idea of ANY country having veto power, it just means that those countries are immune to the UN rules.

This particular case may have a "noble" goal, but the exact same techniques could be (and probably are) used for much more nefarious purposes. There is no good reason why it is even possible for any app to do this.
Apps should NEVER have access to anything outside of themselves without explicit permission. There is no good reason for it, under any circumstances, and it causes huge security holes.

Mobile has not really done any better. most mobile OSs will tell you what permissions an app is asking for, but won't allow you to select which ones to allow. In addition, the apps are still not fully sandboxed. For example on my android phone I have an app that won't run on rooted phones. It doesn't request root permission, so it SHOULD have no possible way of knowing I'm rooted, however it has full access to the file system (without any special permissions) and therefore can figure it out on it's own.
It's time we stopped letting apps have the run of our devices. Developers have repeatedly proven that they don't trust their users, it's time we stopped implicitly trusting them.