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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

#321

Post by SimianSci »

For those who have not been keeping up with recent events. The United States government, is currently reevaluating its relationship with Microsoft due to recent security issues related to Russian and Chinese state-funded attacks.

[Microsoft Storm-0558 Incident, cited as a recent example] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/2023/07/14/ana...

Microsoft recently pledged to improve its security practices through incentives to executive pay and other initiatives.

[Microsoft Blog on recent Commitment] https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2024/06/13/microso...

Despite these pledges, several members of Congress are making it known that they dont see Microsoft as being serious about their recent commitments around security. It is worth noting that several of these members of congress influence how much Microsoft gets paid. The Recall feature is often used as a lightning rod to bring to light the rushed rollout of Microsoft's features without concern for security.

[Video with timestamp of Microsoft's President being questioned by Florida Congresswoman, Recall mentioned] https://youtu.be/kB2GCmasH4c?t=8217

While I suspect there may not be any sole reason for the release delay, it would seem to me that having Microsoft's biggest customer using Recall this way, may greatly influence the company's decision to hold off on the release.

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

#322

Post by acdha »

alt227 wrote: post #186
resource_waste wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lets be honest, if Apple did it, it would be hailed revolutionary. Different customer base.

To enforce your point, rewind.ai has been doing it on mac for a while now and I havent seen anything but good reports about it. https://www.rewind.ai/

That’s the difference consent makes: I’ve heard criticism of that product but it was always “I will never use this” rather than “my root of trust is untrustworthy”.

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

#323

Post by segasaturn »

999900000999 wrote: post #104
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.

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

Honestly, buy an iPad. You can get a new iPad for as cheap as $300 and it will adequately serve all of your basic needs. If you're not tech-literate enough to install Ubuntu (which is extremely easy and straightforward in my experience) then I don't think you will need the extra bells & whistles of owning a laptop.

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

#324

Post by ahmeneeroe-v2 »

Rinzler89 wrote: post #61

What a dumb feature. They had to get all that backlash to understand why everyone wouldn't want it. Is someone at Microsoft taking crazy pills to think consumers would be into that? They pulled the exact same shit 11 years ago when they launched the Xbox One as a "home media center" instead of a gaming console and it came with mandatory always-on internet connection, disc games DRM tied to a single console unable to…

Minus the mandatory always-on internet and DRM, that sounds 10 years ahead of its time. During covid I was really hoping that Microsoft would launch videoconferencing through Kinect (which was sitting unused in a closet in my home). Looking back the XBone wanted to become what my Apple TV has ended up becoming. Agree 100% on the awful delivery of the whole thing though

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

#326

Post by hn_version_0023 »

RIMR wrote: post #313
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…

It's not even only about surveillance. Microsoft also makes Github Copilot. Getting Recall onto developer machines gives them the opportunity to train their AI on how programmers actually program, rather than just using an LLM trained on code. Eventually we'll have programmers with Recall activated by company policy on their PCs, actively training the AI models that will replace their labor. That has to be part of th…

Hear! Hear!

I work in a massive data center. Manned by very few people. I often think about how many homes could be heated or cooled with the power used to prop up the internet.

It feels borderline criminal when there are homeless and hungry all over the world.

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

#327

Post by johnfernow »

Thorrez wrote: post #110
bachmeier wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Windows user accounts used to work locally. At some point during Windows 10's life it became a hassle to use a local account on a new computer. Now in Windows 11, short of modifying the ISO or using other unintuitive workarounds (some of which Microsoft has patched out), you are required to be connected to the Internet and use a Microsoft account when setting up your new computer (even for Windows 11 Pro!) If despite that you choose to work around that requirement, several features are disabled, including ones that enhance security!

Notably, you lose out on full-disk encryption on Windows 11 Home. On Home and Pro you lose out on facial recognition login (Windows Hello), which can be a useful tool for avoiding shoulder surfing attacks in public. But by using a Microsoft account, your computer's password can be reset remotely. There's no way (official or otherwise) to maximize security on Windows 11. Outside of Enterprise, there's not even an official manner to setup an air-gapped Windows 11 PC!

Until they received massive backlash, Microsoft planned on requiring Xbox One users to have a Kinect (camera, mic, and motion sensing device) connected at all times when the console is on, as well as connect to the Internet once a day to use the console. https://www.pcmag.com/news/microsoft-xbox-one-wont-require-k...

To an extent the theoretical concerns that people are stating about Recall sound like paranoia, but the examples above show Microsoft has a bad history when it comes to privacy. Connecting Recall to the Internet sounds like a terrible idea, but so does restricting/limiting local accounts on Windows and (planning on) mandating that your home game console has a camera and mic connected and is connected to the Internet each day.

Unfortunately, they also have a bad history when it comes to security. Recent example: https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/3/24119787/microsoft-cloud-e...

From the article, the US Department of Homeland Security claims that Microsoft has "a corporate culture that deprioritized enterprise security investments and rigorous risk management."

So while on the surface the concerns about Recall seem unreasonable, I think the fear is more understandable given Microsoft's many previously unthinkable actions, in addition to their poor security.

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

#328

Post by nofunsir »

janjones wrote: post #232
nofunsir wrote: post #155

There was a post on HN not too long ago about a random 3rd party/open source tool that does exactly this, no? When I first heard about Recall AI, I immediately thought back to that HN article, but can't find it.

What an irony. If you had Recall or that tool you mention installed, you could probably find it easily :D

Ugg... that just made me think of the opposite case where you're looking for something and it feigns ignorance...[1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD9YqdWwwdw

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

#329

Post by ranger_danger »

slashdave wrote: post #299
patmorgan23 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Per one of the ars Technica articles, All the information collected was stored locally completely unencrypted, and would be accessible by anyone with local administrator rights.

Nevermind accessible to other users, but accessible to any 3rd party application that the user executes. A nightmare of a security hole.

That's already true for every desktop application though. All third party programs can spy on all other programs and documents that user has available. This has been a seemingly criminally-overlooked shortcoming of desktop systems and this approach has fallen WAY behind current mobile security practices.

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

#330

Post by onemoresoop »

red_admiral wrote: post #227
vsuperpower2020 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

I think this was done on purpose to disempower the user.

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