Was there no one at Microsoft who looked at Recall and said: This really, really sucks

Microsoft held its annual Build developer conference this week with that bizarre Copilot+ PC launch tacked on the side. As many of you have wondered, did no one at Redmond take a look at the Windows Recall feature – which was unveiled during the Arm PC launch with Qualcomm – and say: "Er, this might just backfire?" To discuss …

[Phones Sheridan]

Maybe everyone DID point out "This really, really sucks"

Everyone and their dog knows this is a bad idea for hundreds of reasons, so cynically I'm thinking that the TLAs have forced MS to include this feature in windows, (although they would have preferred it to be included quietly or better yet silently), and MS have decided to create a fanfare announcement of "A new feature!™" giving everyone a heads up of what's coming without breaching any potential gag orders that they are being made to do it. Malicious compliance and all that.

Now where's my tinfoil hat.

[Dan 55]

Re: Maybe everyone DID point out "This really, really sucks"

In the beginning, there was a plan, And then came the assumptions, And the assumptions were without form, And the plan without substance.

And the darkness was upon the face of the workers, And they spoke among themselves saying, "It is a crock of shit and it stinks."

And the workers went unto their Supervisors and said, "It is a pile of dung, and we cannot live with the smell."

And the Supervisors went unto their Managers saying, "It is a container of excrement, and it is very strong, Such that none may abide by it."

And the Managers went unto their Directors saying, "It is a vessel of fertilizer, and none may abide by its strength."

And the Directors spoke among themselves saying to one another, "It contains that which aids plants growth, and it is very strong."

And the Directors went to the Vice Presidents saying unto them, "It promotes growth, and it is very powerful."

And the Vice Presidents went to the President, saying unto him, "This new plan will actively promote the growth and vigor Of the company With very powerful effects."

And the President looked upon the Plan And saw that it was good, And the Plan became Policy.

And this, my friend, is how shit happens.

[DoctorNine]

Re: Maybe everyone DID point out "This really, really sucks"

I need this whole thing in illuminated biblical style script, printed on vellum, and encased in glass, to hang by my desk.

In fact, I am reasonably certain that this very item could produce extremely high sales volume for anyone inclined to manufacture it.

[Gmanton]

Re: Maybe everyone DID point out "This really, really sucks"

Thou speakerh in tongues of truth

[hedgie]

Re: Maybe everyone DID point out "This really, really sucks"

That, good sir, is a work of beauty. I almost had to wipe a tear from my eye at its sublime poetry.

[Dan 55]

Re: Maybe everyone DID point out "This really, really sucks"

I can't claim credit for it, it's one of those things that are are so timelessly true that they've been on the Internet for decades and probably on fax machines before then.

[hedgie]

Re: Maybe everyone DID point out "This really, really sucks"

For all we know, some variant may yet be discovered on Egyptian Papyri or Babylonian Cuneiform tablets.

[el_oscuro]

Re: Maybe everyone DID point out "This really, really sucks"

The first time I heard that joke was from my dad - almost 40 years ago.

[Groo The Wanderer]

Re: Maybe everyone DID point out "This really, really sucks"

The real problem isn't that no one thought it sucked, but that no one cared because it's "only" users that are going to complain, and the legal team can use weasel words to prevent most of the lawsuits. What really matters to them is the potential for profit and another market lock-in like they had in the past.

[Benegesserict Cumbersomberbatch]

Re: Maybe everyone DID point out "This really, really sucks"

It's easy to focus on the idea that your screenshots are being taken every n minutes, and overlook that Micros~1 plan to integrate their Copilot AI* with it. Gigabytes of yummy training data of dubious copyright status to feed to their glorified predictive text generators.

"Copilot, send my boss a screenshot of the round figures I was looking at this morning. NO, NOT THOSE ONES!"

*For a very limited value of intelligence.

[yetanotheraoc]

Re: Maybe everyone DID point out "This really, really sucks"

Well sure, that's why eveyone agrees it sucks: because it sucks every which way you look at it.

[Dimmer]

Re: Maybe everyone DID point out "This really, really sucks"

I can just see it now - management arrested for the illegal practice of recording teams video. In some states it requires consent of both parties to be recorded, others just one.

[Philo T Farnsworth]

Re: Maybe everyone DID point out "This really, really sucks"

This does indeed sound like a bonanza for cops of every jurisdiction, from the Feds down to the local PD (Non-US readers substitute your own constabularies).

It also seems like a bonanza for blackmailers.

Send someone an email containing an incriminating attachment -- say some CSAM -- and then, viola, they've got something saved on their computer that can send them to the pokey for a good number of years. Try proving that you're innocent (see the Horizon scandal). Pay up or we call the cops on you.

I don't have a particularly devious mind and I'm fairly certain that more twisted minds than mine can come up with uglier variations on the theme.

[Bartholomew]

money for nothing and your metadata for free

Telemetry got swallowed, why would Microsoft even suspect that shoving recall down peoples throats would not.

The problem is that Microsoft looks at alphabet and sees how much metadata they harvest globally and are drooling. They want that sweet sweet sweet cradle to the grave metadata-hoard on everyone they can.

[GoneFission]

Re: money for nothing and your metadata for free

From a corporate PR and profit perspective, it's honestly a great usage case for AI-driven campaigns to drown out naysayers and skeptics with mass pro-corporate messaging across all news outlets and social media. Real easy way to make it sound like everyone is in Microsoft's camp, and frame the "privacy" crowd as the small-minded tiny minority.

[zimzam]

Re: money for nothing and your metadata for free

And in perfect Microsoft fashion, they take a perfectly good plan and cock it up in the most foreseeable way possible.

[Dimmer]

Re: money for nothing and your metadata for free

I will first in line to sign up for antivirus that blocks this crap and black holes telemetry.

[HuBo]

Doomsday virginity

Hmmmm ... yummy delicious doomsday idea for this "Total Recall, Phantom Menace, Jurassic Park" OS' Copilot++ (better than the original) to integrate this malware-easing 1984-panopticon automated Keyboard-Video-Mouse logger-AI into its hyperbole, by design! Hey, it's not like we're back in 2015 or some such, when our deepest secrets resembled a plus-sized slurpee to the outfit, oh-no-no-no, this here is a brand new future, muuuch better!

[Dan 55]

Re: Doomsday virginity

This time they could call the process "Connected User's NPU Telemetry Service".

[xyz123]

Re: Doomsday virginity

Just call it "keeping internet porn free" and millions of people will suport it without reading any further

[nijam]

Re: Doomsday virginity

> Just call it "keeping internet porn free" and millions of people will suport it without reading any further.

Just call it "keeping internet porn free" and millions of people will say they support it whilst silently hoping it never happens,

[Ropewash]

Re: Doomsday virginity

and a few people will create Recall-chan rule34 featuring Recall vigorously 'ingesting' user data.

[el_oscuro]

Re: Doomsday virginity

Probably the same people who will try to monitor women's PCs to check if they attempted to get any sort of maternal healthcare.

[Cynical Pie]

Re: Doomsday virginity

CUNPUTS?

[SirWired 1]

There's a gem of a good idea in there...

I remember, back in the late 90's, running a program on top of Netscape (or maybe it was a proxy? I can't remember...) that simply indexed all the text your web browser displayed and made for a more-useful searchable history. As a college student working on an Internet that was still at a stage where it could be pretty tough to find stuff, this was like taking bookmarks and browser history to the next level. And the browser is where it belongs; who the heck needs the history of what I was doing in MS Word, or what game I was playing? It's no difficulty at all to find my documents; it's what file indexing is for.

I can understand the privacy implications for businesses (as the coverage has pointed out, it's a GDPR non-starter), but for consumers, I could see this as a useful feature, as long as the data was locked-down as tight as possible. I don't see it as any more-dangerous than having a password manager that also holds your OTP keys... I'd understand users not wanting to deploy it (it should totally be an opt-in feature), but I think it does have some appeal.

[xyz123]

Re: There's a gem of a good idea in there...

MS needs your history.

After all what if you become a politician (or president)? they need that juicy data for blackmail so you'll be forced to pass laws THEY write. Otherwise they'll release the step-grandma videos you watched when you were 17..........

Target everyone, cause you never know WHO will get into power, or the DOJ etc. Even the CODE of recall is designed for MS to upload it. It uses recoverable encryption keys, so MS can upload and decrypt at the other end!

[m4r35n357]

Re: There's a gem of a good idea in there...

Agreed, stupid M$ customers will love it!

Rationalize, acquiesce, accept, repeat.

[Roland6]

Re: There's a gem of a good idea in there...

But those history, journaling and indexing tools were much more useful than a stack of screenshots. There was also a tool that was helpful in all this by a little company called Autonomy…

[doublerot13]

Re: There's a gem of a good idea in there...

100% agree - a search engine for "what I have seen on my screen" would be amazing. More so now with dynamic content on web pages, and a billion different communication mechanisms.

[Benegesserict Cumbersomberbatch]

Re: There's a gem of a good idea in there...

And this is why we can't have nice* things.

* fast, safe, stable, secure, trusted

[el_oscuro]

Re: There's a gem of a good idea in there...

I'm sure you could set up a cron job to do that in Linux if you needed it, and you would have complete control over it.

[Roland6]

Re: There's a gem of a good idea in there...

The script would also be able to record the app’s, folders and files you had open, useful information for a history search tool that is readily available to it.

Makes you wonder given the access MS has to a Windows system - everything on that system can be uploaded to MS according to the EULA, whether the screenshot is just the tip of the iceberg MS have actually implemented…

[eldakka]

Re: There's a gem of a good idea in there...

I can understand the privacy implications for businesses (as the coverage has pointed out, it's a GDPR non-starter), but for consumers, I could see this as a useful feature, as long as the data was locked-down as tight as possible. I don't see it as any more-dangerous than having a password manager that also holds your OTP keys... I'd understand users not wanting to deploy it (it should totally be an opt-in feature), but I think it does have some appeal.

The problem is Microsoft is famous for 'scope-creep' when it comes to its customers. They have form here.

First they'll start re-enableing it (if the user turns it off) with every update - without letting the user know. The only way the user knows is if they check their settings after an update.

Then Microsoft will start taking random samples for quality control - which can be turned off, but again gets re-enabled on every update.

Then they'll say their telemetry needs this random sample, so you can no longer turn of the screen-shotting or turn off sending random samples to MS.

Then Microsft will start taking a fixed subset (say 1 per minute out of the 3-second snapshops) for providing a better search experience for the users (i.e. feeding it into their central copilot AI model) - and they'll provide it to law-enforcement or security services on presentation of a subpoena or warrant.

Then Microsoft will embed it within the MS-Account (which you will have to use to use your local computer) and MS's online storage will automatically sync it - at which point they'll provide it on request (no supoena or warrant required!) to law enforcement or security or adjacent agencies.

I mean, it'll take 3 to 5 years, most likley not until late Windows 12, to get to the "can't be disabled, can't turn off MS taking samples, can't turn off it being synced to your compulsory MS cloud account, live feed into the FBI ...", but MS will take it there eventually.

[Paul Herber]

That's normal corporate culture, more so now than in the past. Contradict the boss, not a team player, can't see your name on the hymn sheet. You are the weakest link. Goodbye.

[Doctor Syntax]

That culture sounds familiar. A bit like the Post Office. There's a lesson to learn there.

[Andy Non]

Whoever came up with this idea

Should be fired from Redmond... via a large canon on the roof of the building while dressed as a clown.

[Someone Else]

Re: Whoever came up with this idea

Yeah, but you can't do that to SatNad...

[Steve Davies 3]

Yes they did look at it

and came to the conclusion that this [cough] [cough] feature sucks big time.

Then the beancounters arrived and the $$$ (with a few Billion in front of it) won the day.

In one corner, we have the Beancounters and in the other, the Marketing Drones.

The have regular fights to see who can inflict the most damage on the world at large.

This round was won by the beancounters.

Die MS, die. Make it long slow and very painful. The whole company has become a 'Blot on the Landscape'.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Yes they did look at it

No. Make it quick. We need to be shut of it ASAP.

[chivo243]

Mom doesn't know it yet...

Her next computer is anything but Windows...

[phuzz]

Re: Mom doesn't know it yet...

These days my mum pretty much just uses an iPad, and it's cut down my tech support calls considerably.

[Geoff Campbell]

Re: Mom doesn't know it yet...

So you're going to tell her what she must have? I dunno, sounds a lot like what Microsoft get so often criticised for doing.

How about you ask her what she would like?

GJC

[Lee D]

I reckon almost everyone who worked on it.

What it indicates is a culture driven by nonsensical ideas enforced upon the "underlings" by marketing / management, and absolutely nobody cares enough (because they're highly paid, they've seen others who have been sacked for less, etc.) to actually fight for it.

This is what happens when you fill your upper echelons with yes-men, and stamp out any kind of feedback from those below.

[Doctor Syntax]

What it indicates is a culture driven by nonsensical ideas enforced upon the "underlings" by marketing / management

It could just as easily be the other way around. Screen snapshot-ting isn't new. Automating it is just the sort of thing some ADHD intern might come up with.

[Jellied Eel]

It could just as easily be the other way around. Screen snapshot-ting isn't new. Automating it is just the sort of thing some ADHD intern might come up with.

That's what I don't get. As another poster said, it's a cron job, not 'AI'. Nothing about Copilot or the 'AI PC' offers me anything I want, quite the opposite. I want a lot of the bloat gone. The video was interesting though about MS's attempts to get back into Windows Mobile and maybe run on Arm. But Recall and a lot of the AI stuf seems to contradict what you want/need on a mobile or laptop. If you want to extend battery life, why would you want the OS doing pointless & dangerous backrground stuff like Recall? Seems to be that again you'd want a stripped down, bare-bones OS that users can run their apps on.

[Someone Else]

Seems to be that again you'd want a stripped down, bare-bones OS that users can run their apps on.

What you want, and what Micros~1 wants, are (again) two entirely different things.

_{And guess who gets what they want?}

[Rgen]

Microsoft ask their own AI if this was a good idea. The response was “Yes” with evil grim

[xyz123]

Recall - We can remember it for you wholesale!

How come the "encrypted" data has code buried deep within that allows microsoft to upload it to themselves AND they have a remote copy of the encryption key used?

Basically wait 6months, MS uploads your entire recall and bingo! they can either sell the data to scammers or they have a fuckton of blackmail info on politicians, council workers and the DOJ!

[xyz123]

"but you can disable Recall in Windows Settings"

predicting it now: the button turns OFF but does nothing. MS claims this was "an oversight" but refuses to acknowledge the data they've slurped up.

For "reasons" (hardcore beastiality porn history) the head of the DOJ refuses to prosecute. Congress has decided to go silent. Even the heads of other governments have gone suspiciously quiet.

MS sits back and laughs atop its hoard of screenshots and internet history, now having the ability to blackmail any politician anywhere!

[Doctor Syntax]

Step 2. Microsoft responds to public outcry. An update makes turning it off work with copious apologies all round.

Step 3. The next update has a small error that silently turns it back on again.

[el_oscuro]

They already have all of this on urs.microsoft.com. Several years ago, I was pentesting an internal corporate web app with an intercepting proxy using Windows 7 and IE8, with the default recommended MSFT settings. As soon as I logged in to the app, the proxy recorded a strange out of bound HTTP request to https://urs.microsoft.com. This request had an XML payload of my my entire request to the internal app, which included all of my login details, sent to MSFT without my consent.

Googling it, it turns out that URS stands for "URL Reputation Services" and supposed to check URLs for malicious websites. A reasonable idea if it was explicitly opt-in, as the list of websites you visit is also sensitive. But sending the complete requests, that is a straight up MiTM attack, and who knows how many terabytes of sensitive info are on urs.microsoft.com.

[ecofeco]

More accurate prediction, it doesn't really turn it off, just hides it from the user.

Looking at you Edge.*

(* I found out Edge keeps running even after you close it. How? I run CCleaner every now and then and it always tells me Edge is still running even though closed and existed it. I now make it a habit to run CCleaner just to make sure Edge is really shut down. And screw you moron website designers who make me have to use Edge)

[mark l 2]

So it seems like Microsoft came up with the idea for Copilot+AI PCs but had no actual clue as to what apps to develop to take advantage of the NPU in these new chips, so have a half baked idea to monitor what you are doing on your computer for the ability to search back to look for 'the website where i saw that brown bag'

No doubt all those who gleefully sign up to social media to give Meta all their personal info will probably hail this is as brilliant idea and not consider the huge privacy concerns this will have. Myself im just glad that Linux exists so I don't have to find how to switch this off on my PC for Microsoft to secretly switch it back on again with the next feature update.

[zimzam]

This thing only makes sense at all because Windows Search and Bing are so useless. But rather than fix them, they need a "killer app" to prop up the OEM market and Windows licenses.

[Sparkus]

msft is leading their CoPilot partner/launch partners like Thomson-Reuters as through they were pigs-to-slaughter. Zero liability for msft, huge danger to customer base, public perception, and viability of these seven launch partners.

[zebm]

We can remember it for you wholesale

Did they not get the cultural reference to Recall? Is this tool all about inserting false memories onto computers?

[Howard Sway]

Was there no one at Microsoft who looked at Recall and said: This really, really sucks

Well yeah, probably, but depending how long you've worked there you will also have had to look at Windows 8, Zune, Sharepoint, Windows CE and plenty more total suckage, and at some point you accepted that everything sucks there but if you want to keep your job you have to keep your mouth shut.

[Avalanche]

Corporate arguments against Recall

One argument against Recall I've missed in this discussion, and I haven't seen in the media, is one I came across on Mastodon (https://infosec.exchange/@chrismerkel/112495797916386580). Warning about privacy, and against cyber criminals, etc. is all nice, but probably actually something that most people can't easily identify with, unless they were hit before.

A much stronger argument against this feature is that lawyers, competition authorities, justice departments, etc. are going to have a field-day with this in discovery process. They can require a company to send all recall data as part of discovery and require that it remain switched on as long as the legal proceeding or investigation is going on.

Higher ups might not care about or think much of the privacy and cyber criminal angle, but they and the legal department will care about the potential for exposure to discovery requests.

[andy the pessimist]

and bofh

Writes a script to delete the contents of the screenshot directory every hour. Bofh walks away quietly.

[irrelevant]

Re: and bofh

Don't forget the database that the OCR'd text from those screenshots is stored in..

[Locomotion69]

Re: and bofh

.. writes a script that stores the screenshot directly to >NUL

FTFY.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: and bofh

BOFH writes a script that fuzzes all screenshots real time

[Alistair]

I'm going to step out on a bit of a limb here.

MS built this so that they can keep those folks who, with lots of time in place and lots of experience, are very highly skilled at what they do but DO NOT want to come back to the office. This way they can make damn sure that highly paid wage slave is actually doing the DAMN WORK. And the board room members bounced the idea around a few other boardrooms and holy cow, the buy in was industrial revolution calibre, jumping on the rolling rail cars popularity. That just made $ signs dance in their heads. And thus it was sold.

Sadly, the calibre of cretins that occupy that space cannot be told that vaccines work and that trickle down economics doesn't, so any objections from the proletariat are to be ignored.

[Cmdr Bugbear]

Maybe this is a distraction

What I'm worried about, is given how widely loathed this idea is, what if this is really only a distraction from some other unholy spawn that they want to sneak into Windows.

From a personal perspective, I left Windows behind long ago. Just a shame that I need to use it on my employer's laptop...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Maybe this is a distraction

p2v is my first task when I get a new corporate laptop and I absolutely MUST use windows for some requirement

[mevets]

Trademark.

IIRC MS has a design patent on "This really, really sucks", after failing so completely at "It Just Works".

[ecofeco]

Ah, but sucks for who?

Us plebeian users? Yeah, it sucks.

The pump and dump vaporware hype cheerleaders who will profit directly? Nope.

[prh99]

Even if the screenshots etc stay local, at least for now, I would not be surprised if it was still generating data Microsoft can use for it's AI or ad targeting etc.

Even if people did say it sucks, I doubt the higher ups would listen. Surveillance capitalism is the name of the game now.

[sebacoustic]

apart from the regular "privacy ..." Recall concerns

the simple but useful "show password" button, that you only push when you are sure nobody is looking over your shoulder: that's useless now because you never know when Recall might hit you!

[joynicholes]

Was there no one at Microsoft who looked at Recall and said: This really, really sucks

For reference follow this: https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows11/comments/1cxgp19/microsoft_details_windows_11_recall_ai_privacy/

[joynicholes]

For reference follow this: https://twitter.com/TheRegister/status/1794299132901048491

[jeremy.ekers]

Kettle does not seem to have an RSS feed.

[Sparkus]

No mystery here.

For the past couple of years, msft has been throwing their bad ideas up on a wall and using public opinion/horror to judge what they can get away with and how fast.

The last msft executive 'leader' that was fired for making bad decisions was who?

[herberts ghost]

Name the engineers and executives.

How about starting to name the evil dummies that participate in these travesties, so they can receive the well deserved personal derision of their colleagues. This is the start of the privacy holocaust and credit need to be given where well deserved.

[Anonymous Coward]

There was no one who thought it was a bad idea because they're all iPhone or Android users who have no problems with Apple and Google recording every word they say, face scanning every photo they take, and scanning every document on their phone to upload to iCloud and GoogleDrive.

Every time I see some idiot crying about MS "spying" they're an iPhone or Android user. Hypocritical idiots pretending to care about privacy, in reality they're just manchildren fanboys hating on their chosen enemy corporation while taking it up the ass from their favored corporation.

1984 already happened 10 years ago on iOS and android.