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Comment by ryanmccullagh | Hacker News Reader

Likely, this will be illegal, especially if users aren't aware their screens are being recorded. Furthermore that screenshots of activity are stored in the Azure cloud.

Developers building it are probably thinking about Security Considerations, but are getting pushback from product managers. So data leak is imminent.

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I believe the questionable legality also extends to any kind of video calls taking place on systems with this turned on. If Recall indeed "does not perform content moderation", then having it on would include having screenshots of all video calls.

Especially in many-party consent jurisdictions recording video calls by taking screenshots at a sufficiently high frequency without the explicit consent, or at least option to opt out, of remote parties is probably illegal.

Disclaimer: IANAL and this isn't legal advice.

No the announcement was clear that the storage is local. But that doesn't protect against malware.

Not to mention that, even taking them at their word on that for the sake of argument, storing the data locally is far from sufficient. Can we be sure that the data is only ever processed locally and that the results of that processing stay local?

>> No the announcement was clear that the storage is local.

But I just bought a new computer and need to recall stuff from the old one.

Or, I am using my laptop / tablet computer and need to recall stuff done on my desktop comptuer. (Or similarly, I am using my smartphone and need to recall stuff done on my laptop.)

All they have to do is convince the user of the advantages of sending their recall data to the cloud and the user will agree to do so.

I was under the impression that Recall was designed to be local-only - all processing done locally, storage local too (the article quotes 25GB of local storage for three months of screenshots).

Microsoft isn't really specific about what is local and what isn't. Sure, they are very specific that the storage of the screenshots is local. What about all the processing? As far as I see it they're far less specific about that.

And who says this will stay local and isn't a small T&C update away from being shared with 'trusted partners'?

The article and the source video note these screenshots are stored locally: "Satya point out the processing and data storage is done locally on the device"

> Furthermore that screenshots of activity are stored in the Azure cloud.

Where does it say that screenshots will go to the cloud?

It's one thing for this data to be held locally and under extreme protection through the OS.

But Azure cloud? How can this be legal?

The way we treat corporations doing bad things in America:

It's probably not illegal...

And if it is, they're probably not going to get caught...

And if they do, the government probably won't go after them...

And if it does, they're probably not going to be found guilty...

And if they are, they probably won't face any consequences...

And if they do, nobody's going to go to jail.

Azure Cloud isn’t mentioned in the article.

I overtrusted the original commenter. My bad... Thanks for the correction.

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