Hacker News Reader

Comment by chx | Hacker News Reader

If Recall is not completely illegal already in the EU then Microsoft is doing an any% speedrun from launch to having EU wide legislation specifically banning your product. There is no scenario where the EU will allow this to exist within its borders. The very valid concern for abusive spouses alone makes for excellent political fodder. You won't find a single soul in the EP who would speak up against a legislation framed that way. The newly elected representatives would certainly enjoy an easy win when most of their work will be complicated and very hard.

View on HN

Why would Recall be illegal in the EU?

1. GDPR Article 6 lists the lawful purposes for processing private data. The only that can apply is "If the data subject has given consent to the processing of his or her personal data" and opt out won't cut it based on previous cases. Microsoft needs to ship Recall default off in the EU and make it strictly opt in. Given it seems like a simple keypress might re-enable it, this doesn't look good so far.

2. Even if Microsoft ships it default off in the EU and makes it strictly opt in, it's not at all clear whether Recall recording said information of EU citizens from chats, emails and everything else on someone else's computer is lawful. Ie.: just because I sent you a message over Whatsapp or Viber doesn't mean I consented to you processing it with Recall.

3. Even if Microsoft manages to clear the GDPR hurdle and -- that's saying something -- the EP and the EC might still take issue with it: it certainly violates the spirit of the GDPR even if not the letter of it and together with the domestic abuse issue they probably will show the EU is not always so slow in legislating.

Recall works locally on the client machine from what I understand. The snapshots don't leave your computer, so all this may not be under GDPR's purview.

What if European citizens want this feature? Do they not get a choice?

I think pretty much everyone who's pissed off about this feature is because it defaults on.

No. Not even close. The problem is that it ships with the OS.

When Apple shipped Airtag and we said it's a fantastic tool for stalkers people said "but this is not new, there are other similar tools blah blah blah". Doesn't matter one whit. It's an Apple product, in accessibility and awareness it's so far above the rest it's not even funny.

Who cares that Rewind.ai exists? The chances of an abusive husband finding and installing that is incredibly low. Because of that, no one howled when it was released. But the chances of the same man click MS Recall on? waaaaaaay higher.

It's possible shipping with default off might clear the GDPR but that doesn't matter either, alas.

Of course, there's a lack of women in data scientists. https://msmagazine.com/2023/01/19/women-data-science-technol...

> But as long as the field of data science remains predominantly male and white, it will be difficult to have inclusive advancements in artificial intelligence.

2023 January.

The freakin' UNESCO in 2019 https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000367416.page=1

> the servility expressed by so many other digital assistants projected as young women – provides a powerful illustration of gender biases coded into technology products, pervasive in the technology sector and apparent in digital skills education.

> Today, women and girls are 25 per cent less likely than men to know how to leverage digital technology for basic purposes, 4 times less likely to know how to programme computers and 13 times less likely to file for a technology patent

of course a product will arise which prominently hurts women simply because there are not enough women around the table to say "don't do this".

the techbros downvoting this without leaving a comment as to where I am wrong just demonstrates how right it is :D

Reply on news.ycombinator.com