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Microsoft to delay release of Recall AI feature on security concerns

reuters.com

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Re: Microsoft to delay release of Recall AI feature on security concerns

#101

Post by throw20240511 »

simonw wrote: post #90
segasaturn wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My takeaway is that Microsoft has been trying to boil the frog, but slipped and turned the temperature up too quickly. They're retreating for now, but make no mistake that Recall will slowly trickle back into Windows under another name. Every major power broker wants something like Recall to become the norm - bosses to spy on their employees, governments to spy on their citizens/enemies, and tech CEO's to collect tra…

This is a very cynical take. I've not seen anything to make me think this feature is intended for surveillance as opposed to personal utility. The personal utility benefits are very clear to me - the problem is the ease with which malicious attackers might steal the data (if they can breach the system).

and your take is quite naive.

Surveillance is absolutely the purpose, overt or not. The huge push for bossware/spyware for windows in 2020+ demonstrates that the less ethical portions of industry desperately want to spy on users workstations! Eventually there will be retention laws in certain regulated industries that mandate such technologies! Why enable this potential abuse?

Microsoft is trying to Sherlock the surveillance software industry with this!

I’d rather run North Koreas spyware Red Star Linux than Microsoft Windows.

Re: Microsoft to delay release of Recall AI feature on security concerns

#102

Post by freedomben »

simonw wrote: post #90
segasaturn wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My takeaway is that Microsoft has been trying to boil the frog, but slipped and turned the temperature up too quickly. They're retreating for now, but make no mistake that Recall will slowly trickle back into Windows under another name. Every major power broker wants something like Recall to become the norm - bosses to spy on their employees, governments to spy on their citizens/enemies, and tech CEO's to collect tra…

This is a very cynical take. I've not seen anything to make me think this feature is intended for surveillance as opposed to personal utility. The personal utility benefits are very clear to me - the problem is the ease with which malicious attackers might steal the data (if they can breach the system).

I agree, I think GP is overly cynical. There's a strong chance that the primary reason is for personal utility. But MS (like all big tech) are all about two-birds-one-stone wins. If you can get the personal utility, while also gaining capability that "rightsholders" and advertisers, etc will want, that's a huge win to them. Reminds me a lot of Apple's hardware DRM that is primarily about reducing the value of stolen Apple hardware, but which also serves to make third party repairs way more difficult and expensive, which is not a "con" to them.

Re: Microsoft to delay release of Recall AI feature on security concerns

#103

Post by chx »

> Recall snapshots will only be decrypted and accessible when the user authenticates.

Question is, do you need to auth every time you try to access past snapshots? If not then this is still the mother lode for any infostealer.

And I do not think the danger Recall poses in an abusive relationship especially to women is adequately answered by "You can disable saving snapshots, pause them temporarily, filter applications and websites from being in snapshots, and delete your snapshots at any time" -- you'd need to know this thing exists and figure out how to pause. And I wonder whether the pause itself would leave a trace...

Re: Microsoft to delay release of Recall AI feature on security concerns

#104

Post by 999900000999 »

nimbius wrote: post #63

In summary: the only customers that matter --corporations paying site licenses-- declared this to be an unacceptable business risk. Anyone who is still using windows in 2024 and isnt a multinational business or llc gets what they deserve.

What if you can't afford a Mac, and you're not technically literate enough to install Ubuntu ?

Speaking for myself, I dual boot mint and windows because I really like playing games and making music. Both of those are absolutely subpar on Linux.

Outside of our nerd bubble, most normal people don't really want to run desktop Linux. Macs are great, but I can't really game on them.

Re: Microsoft to delay release of Recall AI feature on security concerns

#105

Post by Avshalom »

simonw wrote: post #90
segasaturn wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My takeaway is that Microsoft has been trying to boil the frog, but slipped and turned the temperature up too quickly. They're retreating for now, but make no mistake that Recall will slowly trickle back into Windows under another name. Every major power broker wants something like Recall to become the norm - bosses to spy on their employees, governments to spy on their citizens/enemies, and tech CEO's to collect tra…

This is a very cynical take. I've not seen anything to make me think this feature is intended for surveillance as opposed to personal utility. The personal utility benefits are very clear to me - the problem is the ease with which malicious attackers might steal the data (if they can breach the system).

It's a system that constantly surveils you, of course it's meant for surveillance. The only question is who gets access, is it just you, or is it you and the cops, or is it you and the cops and anyone with a checkbook.

Re: Microsoft to delay release of Recall AI feature on security concerns

#106

Post by JonathanMerklin »

jcfrei wrote: post #85
nimbius wrote: post #63

In summary: the only customers that matter --corporations paying site licenses-- declared this to be an unacceptable business risk. Anyone who is still using windows in 2024 and isnt a multinational business or llc gets what they deserve.

Not quite true: The other huge group of customers is simply gamers.

Genuinely asking: is that huge in terms of their install base or revenue, or is that huge in terms of PR ramifications (like, "vocal minority" type of deal)? In my younger days I'd've had a heavily skewed pro-gamer and pro-authority-of-the-gamer-rabble viewpoint, but now at this phase of my life I can't help but feel the majority of the places I see Windows are all in business and education contexts (so just business, heyo). I'd be curious to know if the gamer-rabble still holds the kind of weight in the social media aggregate that, say, got the Kinect-as-mandatory stuff walked back.

Re: Microsoft to delay release of Recall AI feature on security concerns

#107

Post by beretguy »

wruza wrote: post #88

Recall uses local AI models built into Windows 11 to screenshot mostly everything you see or do on your computer and then give you the ability to search and retrieve items you’ve seen. An explorable timeline lets you scroll through these snapshots to look back on what you did on a particular day on your PC. Everything in Recall is designed to remain local and private on-device, so no data is used to train Microsoft’s…

> Everything in Recall is designed to remain local and private on-device, so no data is used to train Microsoft’s AI models.

Not yet.

Re: Microsoft to delay release of Recall AI feature on security concerns

#108

Post by neltnerb »

simonw wrote: post #90
segasaturn wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My takeaway is that Microsoft has been trying to boil the frog, but slipped and turned the temperature up too quickly. They're retreating for now, but make no mistake that Recall will slowly trickle back into Windows under another name. Every major power broker wants something like Recall to become the norm - bosses to spy on their employees, governments to spy on their citizens/enemies, and tech CEO's to collect tra…

This is a very cynical take. I've not seen anything to make me think this feature is intended for surveillance as opposed to personal utility. The personal utility benefits are very clear to me - the problem is the ease with which malicious attackers might steal the data (if they can breach the system).

I do not think it is cynical to assume that Microsoft would sell this to companies as a way to do constant surveillance of their employees with OCR and LLMs used to make it easier for a manager to sift through massive amounts of data.

That's just an actual use case that their true customers would pay for, I think it's awful and should be illegal under any reasonable worker protections but why would they not advertise it this way privately to business customers?

I also don't think it's cynical to think that a manager looking for a reason to get rid of someone will have a much easier time justifying a PIP or just straight up firing someone if they can retroactively have an AI do it for them.

Why wouldn't they be able to ask the system "how much of 's time do they spend doing things on the computer that are not directly related to ?"

Is it technically happening already? Sure, there's nasty nasty spyware being forced on people and it is awful and I hate that those employers are getting away with it. But integrated into the OS, on by default, with a long memory? Just imagine how easy it will be to fire anyone that tries to unionize in an effort to fight against such surveillance.

Re: Microsoft to delay release of Recall AI feature on security concerns

#109

Post by hehdhdjehehegwv »

This is why you need proactive privacy evaluations before you ship.

The standard of the past 25 years of “let’s violate every privacy law and know it won’t catch up with us” is over.

You either ship privacy complaint product, which means painful and slow review and adjustment which is an obvious financial cost…OR you go to market out of compliance, get slammed by the press and regulators, and the entire project eats shit.

What seems like short-term cost saving is really just torching the entire investment.

The underlying reason Boeing planes fall out of the sky and these privacy hostile products fail is the same: speed and greed.

Re: Microsoft to delay release of Recall AI feature on security concerns

#110

Post by Thorrez »

bachmeier wrote: post #91
7thpower wrote: post #80

This is not a must have feature for me, but I am interested to see how it unfolds and I can definitely see it being useful in the future. I do think they bungled the launch by not thinking through the security implications, and particularly how many sensitive threads this crosses. That being said, they took a risk, it did not go over well, and they’re adjusting. I am sure I will get flamed, but I appreciate the appro…

I think there's more to it than that. After a while, they say "We're going to send some of your information into the cloud to give you a better experience." Then a while after that, you have to click the button giving permission to send all your information to the cloud or you can't use Windows. In spite of claims often made on this site that nobody understands or cares about privacy, people do care and understand wh…

Does Recall work locally? If so, why would it send data to the cloud?
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