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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

#221

Post by JW_00000 »

neltnerb wrote: post #108
simonw wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If that's the case, why don't they sell Teams activity data to companies? I mean, after you're idle for 5 minutes, Teams detects this and changes your status to "idle". Following your reasoning, they should be selling this data already.

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

#222

Post by ugjka »

bostik wrote: post #138
ugjka wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are already Recall type of products on the market, not just that, they also work on the cloud not just locally. All Microsoft had to do was make it opt in by default

Yes, these existing products are generally called RATs or spousal stalkerware.

No

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

#223

Post by fumeux_fume »

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).

Cynical, that's cute. The only thing that's "very clear" up to this point is that no one wants msft taking screenshots of their activity.

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

#224

Post by xcv123 »

jahewson wrote: post #180
999900000999 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What is this laptop that costs less than a Mac but is good for gaming?

There are cheap gaming laptops from Dell, HP, MSI, Asus, Gigabyte, Lenovo, Acer, Razer.

Dell G15

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

#225

Post by sirspacey »

neltnerb wrote: post #108
simonw wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You’ve got a point. Presuming you are correct, what do you think happens when the team has been culled?

Union busting & screen tracking already works pretty well as is for the goals you’ve outline.

We usually think about tracking/measurement as Big Brother looking over our shoulder, but all of us are living a day-to-day reality of losing context and having to invest a lot of effort and time to get it back (usually only partially).

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

#226

Post by godelski »

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've not seen anything to make me think this feature is intended for surveillance

I think you may have forgotten about Chat Control[0]. Regardless of its intent for surveillance or not, Relay would be an essential technology for making things such as Chat Control even possible.

I must stress that this can come with all good intentions. That the developers and even Nadella see this purely from the utility perspective and have zero intentions to use it for increased surveillance. But like they say "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions." So I'm trying to distinguish between the potential harm of the technology itself and the conspiracies that are arising. Because we need to recognize that evil often arises with no malintent, and to be careful attributing malicious intentions to those who never had none. It can be incredibly hard to know.

But regardless of the intent, I think we can now look at this and see how ripe the technology is for abuse. And I think we can ask the questions about how likely it is to be abused. And don't just ask how likely __you__ are to be subjected to the abuse, but include others. Because even if others are subjected to that abuse, it is not unlikely to affect you in some form (if you need that specific motivation). I think we can all agree that the likelihood of the technology being abused in authoritarian countries like Iran, North Korea, and many others, is quite high. Maybe this isn't on your radar or maybe it isn't a concern for you because those powers will already abuse their citizens. But certainly this gives them the ability to be more abusive and more invasive.

[0] https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/chat-control/

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

#227

Post by red_admiral »

vsuperpower2020 wrote: post #149
red_admiral wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I know, a long while ago, the Islamic Republic of Iran asked Cisco to develop a filtering solution to stop their citizens from accessing undesirable content. Cisco said no. Then US companies started asking for filters to stop their employees watching porn at work, Cisco invented a centralised domain/packet filtering solution for their routers, and Iran went "can we buy one of those, please?". My take is tha…

When would this be useful? Microsoft's best examples are that the user forgot the location of a chinese food place your friend told you once.

I imagine MS did a lot of user studies, and found that the average user could gain a lot from being able to ask the computer questions like "where's the word document for the summer anniversary party that I worked on a couple of weeks ago" or "the photo with the waterfall from our holiday in Greece in 2015 that I sent to Mary recently". Whether Recall in 2024 will be good enough to answer queries like that remains to be seen.

From helping non-technical family members find where they've mislaid files (such as behind another file on the desktop, which can happen if you drag more than one file at a time) I am confident there is a user base for this kind of thing.

We are, after all, in a world where the youth don't seem to understand file systems and folders [1] and rely on the search feature for everything. Recall could, if done properly, be a great user experience for such people.

It was through user studies that we got both the ribbon interface (great for new users apparently, even if less so for experts) and the fact that when you open an office app it suggests a list of documents you worked on most recently. Sharepoint even takes this further in organisations and suggests documents shared by others that "might be relevant to you" based on what you worked on recently (it's not very good).

If I want to be really snarky, I could mention that UNIX had "Recall" back in the days of text-mode only consoles. It was called the `.bash_history` file, and it's genuinely useful.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30253526

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

#228

Post by int_19h »

sumeruchat wrote: post #213
nofunsir wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's exactly this. Development of a feature like this surely started during the WFH craze, where managers could no longer casually walk behind people who had to have their monitors facing outwards. A market opened up, and this is not the only tool for this sort of corporate surveillance. Certain Software Engineers will probably get some time without it by claiming they need Admin rights and that the system messes up…

[flagged]

You are very lucky if you have a choice of OS at work.

In any case, something like this wouldn't be hard to implement on Linux. And if Windows normalizes it in corporate environments, rest assured that other parties will offer it for Linux as well.

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

#230

Post by FactKnower69 »

resource_waste wrote: post #116
nextworddev wrote: post #57

This is what happens when a 3 trillion dollar company moves fast and breaks things

It doesnt help that M$'s reputation is awful. How many different ad screens are on windows 11? How many privacy things did I need to check or uncheck for privacy? Why did the ads come back after I disabled it? Why did onedrive takeover my documents? Microsoft isnt trustworthy. I have begun my migration away. I only use Microsoft for programs my customers use. MSTeams(webapp isnt good enough for high stakes b2b), and…

This feature wouldn't even be the worst thing in the world if it was strictly opt-in like every other piece of software you would run on your computer; the reason everyone is so fucking sick of Microsoft's rollouts is the way they trample over user consent by replacing every instance of "No" in their UI with "Not now" or "Remind me later", eventually hijacking your computer and forcing it to shut down and install updates while you were using it if you dare postpone their "optional" rollout for too long

It's just extra funny when the software you're being bullied into nonconsensually installing on your own machine is also literally spyware that screenshots your desktop every few minutes

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