Windows Recall is stored locally and encrypted from what I understood
In the future, if I know Microsoft, this trove will be mined for "consumer oriented optimization and improvement of Windows Experience". This means at least a DLL or more probably an API will be present to tap into that data, which can be (ab)used by third parties.
So, even if it's stored locally and be encrypted at rest, it doesn't mean it'll be completely unavailable to Microsoft or third parties.
Oh, lastly, I'm sure that there'll be at least one forensics company which will build a tool to dump this data, making governments do a little happy dance.
But if I’m honest I would never use that feature if I would leave outside of the EU, I don’t know another regulatory body big tech is taking seriously.
Does the system really delete it, or mark it as deleted? I'm not so sure.
> I would never use that feature if I would leave outside of the EU
Considering the EU's love of "lawful interception", I'd never use that feature even if I live in EU.
> I don’t know another regulatory body big tech is taking seriously.
Yet, everybody is trying to circumvent GPDR somehow (because monies).
Companies are regularly fined meaningful amounts due to not respecting Gdpr, citizens have clear ways to complain, companies do take EU rules seriously given risks of massive fines. I’m pretty sure it’s the most successful, well known privacy regulatory framework in the world, to the point where other regions point to it to describe their own frameworks.
I live in a country which borders EU. We have GPDR compatible laws and my work contains a lot of cooperation with people and organizations inside EU. However, I think you can still find some “legitimate interest” in that data to mine it nevertheless.
Rewind is the house's foundation, the rest of the walls come later. How fast they come depends on what the CEO sees as the future of making money.
Having these recordings is a liability more than it is a productivity boost. People today don't operate computers under the assumption they are recorded at all times even if they know the feature is there. So of course it's dangerous.
One day, when you'll be thoroughly used to being surveilled at all times, having Rewind-like features will be as ubiquitous or as normal as walking around today with a GPS tracker, microphone and spy cam in your pocket, for someone else to use. Something equally unacceptable some decades ago.
It's already touted as an AI feature.
And yes Microsoft is very adamant the images are stored locally, I wonder if all the processing is purely local too though.
But this is today (as in "at the literal moment the statement was made"). What about tomorrow?
History is plastered with examples of things companies were adamant about and as it turned out they either didn't keep their word for long or even it was a lie as it was spoken.
One day they'll decide it's for your own interest to share this data. Or a patch will accidentally sync it to the cloud. Or their model will be trained on your data. Or authorities start targeting this for obtaining way more data than otherwise needed. Or malware will use it as a treasure trove of info like never before. All of this keeps happening, I can't bring myself to believe this case in particular will break the mold.
I didn't say that too explicitly, sorry.
The howls of outrage when Microsoft announced this are such that they may well have gotten the message on this one. But somebody else lower-profile will have the same bright idea.
And domestic abusers do install such tools, by the way.
Honestly I never asked for it but now that I’ve seen it I want to try on my personal machines, if data are local I have no issues with it at all. I’m personally not afraid of Microsoft, but I understand they haven’t been good at building trust for the past decade+. It would be awesome as an open source project.
However I can see how something like Recall is pretty problematic in a corporate context, when enabled by admins without end-user controls
Just the kind of thing this NSA Prism-participating company would think was a top notch idea.
Not saying the real motive is surveillance… I’m sure a feature update or two away will also turn the data into a real money maker of advertising which instead of just being able to advertise to you, can kill two birds with one stone in being able to increase tenfold the ad revenue by watching who you’re talking with in your emails, your PM’s on Facebook (or wherever else) and then selling marketing data on you AND them.
If I was a purely profit driven individual - I’d be doing exactly that. But I have too much of a heart.
Even if they say that they’ll be abandoning this idea as they have ‘listened to user feedback’ or some other bull, the complete damage has already been done here.
Thank the lord there are an abundance of excellent OS alternatives.
When that day comes, when you don't want someone recording your screen and rummaging around your hard drives, linux will be there.
Every bad day for Windows is a good day for linux.
It's not a surprise that Microsoft and Apple are determined to get us to use their cloud products for our personal data - there's billions up for grab.