I hear this a lot but such a perspective elides the novelty (and the actual question):
If I devise a mechanical device that semi-faithfully creates marks that convey information about a conversation - but which does not offer a way to replay the conversation whatsoever - does that constitute a recording subject to two-party consent?
If so, how does this relate to a potential decision to write notes about a call right after as a memo/in my diary?
If so, how does this relate to having my secretary record the conversation in shorthand while listening furtively to the conversation?
The term ''interception'' means to secretly hear, secretly record,
or aid another to secretly hear or secretly record the contents of
any wire or oral communication through the use of any intercepting
device by any person other than a person given prior authority by
all parties to such communication.
The term ''contents'', when used with respect to any wire or
oral communication, means any information concerning the identity
of the parties to such communication or the existence, contents,
substance, purport, or meaning of that communication.
If you get content, useful or otherwise, from the recording, you are violating the law. Unless you fall under one the exemptions, which you probably don't.
So first question, "devise a mechanical device" -- violates. Second, "write notes", no. Third question, "secretary record" -- no.
Fair enough, it seems the watch would be an 'intercepting device' and thus all parties would need to agree for any party to use the device for the summary function.
Right it does secretly record, because of the 15s buffer. "Record then delete" or "Record but can't access" is not acceptable, the law covers intercepting entirely.
Apple is banking on the transcripts-not-recordings and notification sounds (can't be disabled) to avoid it, but MA law is more strict.
I doubt "15s buffer" will hold up as "not a recording" and a notification that the recording is used 15 seconds later (during which a person could have walked away) won't be good enough.
AFAIK one problem is that the law is written to punish the recorder, not the provider of the technology. So it will likely slip by until someone makes a claim against an individual using it, and Apple will end up geofencing it.
One complication for geofencing is that the Mass law applies if one party is in the state. So if you're on a zoom with someone in Mass, you're still violating.
There seems to be a mass downvoting scheme on HN lately. I don't know who's behind it and what their motives are but I constantly see valid comments made within the last five minutes greyed out.
I would like to raise another question. If I recap a meeting onto physical paper, by hand, is it still considered a felony?
The point I'm trying to make by this exaggeration is that sometimes the information itself is private and recording that information causes issues as well.
e.g. a military personal taking a pen and paper and listing some secret information they know of, this piece of paper by definition is also subject to regulation that is supposed to keep secret information secure.
Eh, I hope Apple continues to provide this and it forces the needed discussion about how two-party consent requirements are nonsensical. Why should it be illegal for me to remember exactly a conversation that I participated in, instead of only being allowed to have a vague recollection?
Laws like this provide cover for abusers and deceivers, by preemptively spoiling objective evidence and making any accusations depend on hearsay instead.
It's not illegal for you to remember, it's illegal for you to record. There's a difference.
For me, I don't want to live in a world where if I say something embarrassing or not well thought out, someone pushes a button and the last 15 seconds is transcribed as evidence. That's a different world to the previous one where it would be someone's word fori it.
As for the fact that phone could already do this, that's not the point. Phone users have to go out of their way to make it happen so it's generally unlikely to happen. The watch feature though is always on and just waiting for you to press "save last 15 seconds"
Same with the always-on transcription feature that you dont even need to interact with. I like not having to speak with extreme precision, knowing my words are going into some record.
> Eh, I hope Apple continues to provide this and it forces the needed discussion about how two-party consent requirements are nonsensical
Really disagree on this, I think all states should be two party consent, personally.
> Why should it be illegal for me to remember exactly a conversation that I participated in, instead of only being allowed to have a vague recollection?
It's not illegal, it's just that the other person has to know that you're doing that and consent to it.
Giving them the chance to walk away or to tell a person and their Meta glasses to fuck off is important.
Our politicians and legislators lie on camera constantly. But it doesn't really seem to matter much these days. So I'm not sure why this would make a difference.
Everyone being liars means you and I are both liars, same as the politicians. But the politicians have the power and if we remove two party consent then they get to surreptitiously record you and leverage that power. It doesnt even the power playing field.
We can alreay write notes down for every conversation and then send them to the person involved saying "we talked about X, Y, and Z." That last step is the key because it lets them object in writing if you mischaracterize things. From a "catching someone in a lie" the most important step is that one, because you form a paper trail where the other party can correct or contest what was written and bring that up now, and the fact that they didn't is itself evidence in case of a dispute later. The apple watch feature doesn't do that, it just dragnets everything. Even if it recorded the audio, we are in a faked-audio world so unless you have some signal that they agreed that they said a thing ahead of time, they can always deny it later.
Alarming normalisation. Issues I see off the top of my head:
- Governments can now learn even more about you when they confiscate your device.
- Devices confiscated at airports provide a full history of you.
- Privacy issues: will my conversation with someone using this tech truly be private? Do I have to be careful what I say around everyone by default? Always have clear thought out opinions?
- Personal relations: spouses, friends, relatives demanding to see your history to check up on you and what you've been 'thinking'?
- Society where nothing can be assumed to be private by default
- Slippery slope to a future where you have always on location, cameras, mics for everyone with a mobile device. A complete reshaping of society. Therefore being unable to count on previous societal norms
With "use it or loose it" brain feature, I don't really want my natural recap skill to atrophy to make me dependent on this sort of tech. Not considering that they can secretly ship other monitoring features to constantly scan for certain discussions.
Crazy that this is about to be normalized. Can't help but think the discourse of "they already record everything anyway" of the past couple years (even in the absence of complete proof) has played a part.
Never thought it would be Apple to normalize it either. I’ve been in the ecosystem because they have a proven track record of privacy and security and taking principled stands.
I’m sure the NSA is salivating at this and I don’t trust the current administration not to legislate back doors.
Terrible misstep from Apple from my perspective. This is their “they removed Don’t Be Evil from the website” moment for me.
There's been plenty of evidence that nothing is recorded or sent back, hardly "absence of complete proof". People have identified basically everything coming from the network stack of an iPhone.
This is already normalized in most modern office buildings. There are video and audio recording devices in virtually all common areas. This started a bit after private offices were done away with.
>There's been plenty of evidence that nothing is recorded or sent back, hardly "absence of complete proof".
You may have a different understanding of the word "complete" than the standard definition.
Unless you are claiming the verifiers kept the watches being tested under constant survellance for several years, the proof you are alluding to may only prove that it is not routinely sending or recording data. It does not prove they can't turn it on whenever they feel like it, or when obeying a time-limited and geofenced mass surveillance order.
I mean, anything with a microphone or camera (and some things without) can theoretically be used to listen to/record you at any given time for a myriad of reasons.
If you are worried about such a device being on your person, I think the easy solution is just not to wear or buy one.
In theory any device with a microphone and an internet connection can record everything and send it off to some remote server, but in practice there was really no evidence of this happening on any significant scale for a long time. It is easy to see how this would make a difference for most people. But already there was an attitude among some people of "we all carry a microphone in our pocket, there is no privacy anymore".
Then voice-activated devices came out which (without making a secret of it) started recording after detecting some watchword, of course there were false positives but most normal people didn't really seem to care about that. Again this was used by the most paranoid or anti-technology people as an argument that "see, they're really recording everything like we've been saying all along".
Now a device comes out which explicitly and openly records everything within reach and applies AI analysis to it, and the precise people who should be most against it act like it's no big deal because supposedly this was already happening anyway - while, on the contrary, I think this is precisely the moment where the line is being crossed in a way that will have actual negative consequences on society, and this is the time to take a stand against it.
So ironically we see that the hyper-activistic all-or-nothing attitude is actually working against the very interests that its proponents claim to want to protect.
Even if it is, the software on the device could theoretically do whatever it wants with the data before it's encrypted/uploaded, and if it's sent to Apple, they could do whatever they want with it too.
I like the idea (we’ll see about the execs). It seems to record what I would remember anyway (“yesterday you and Joe and Anupam talked about going fishing a chose a date”) unless I was distracted.
It’s like the cameras in the glasses. If all they said is what _I_ know (“That’s Julie who worked in the same group as you at company Z three years ago. You also ran into her at the grocery store shortly after you quit Z and it was awkward” but not tell me anything about Julie I wouldn’t know, like spouse or where she now works or anything like that”) it would be an excellent prosthesis. Public figures have humans who do this for them.
Unfortunately the glasses makers don’t understand the difference and make it too general and privacy destroying. This Apple thing might be OK in my opinion..but the reality remains to be seen.
I have prosopagnosia. Glasses that could tell me the name of the person talking to me would be amazing. But not if I have to give big tech data about everyone around me
I have it as well. This is how i explain it to regular folks: most people have an whole neural network dedicated to processing the human face, memorizing its feutures and matching them to the people in front of them. But when they look at trees they cant really distinguish a pine tree from another pine tree, unless the differences are extreme: one is brunt down, or has a weird shaped trunk, etc. If they try to recall a specific pine tree all they can recall is a messy green spiky blob. Why? Because their brain has no neural network dedicated to identifying trees. For us, the human face is as distinguishable as a tree
Good way to describe it. Hard to relay to people what it is like walking into a crowded room and not be able to find the people you are meeting without one of them waving.
I try to explain it is a lot like the subway scenes from Pink Floyd's "The Wall". Everyone has the same distorted indistinguishable face.
Very likely I have lost a lot of "new friends" and business contacts from walking past not recognizing them.
I would love to have AI that can help support my fragmented memory. As my mom said, I'd forget my head if it wasn't attached. However, this requires a lot of TRUST with the company this access. Apple is the only big tech I could trust but I'm still unsure.
Apple has clearly done things that make it impossible for them to comply with such requests by not keeping certain data in the first place and/or doing work locally (in the customer’s device) to which it doesn’t have access. This is even in a couple of cases when the result can be inconvenient for the end user (e.g. they can’t restore lost data).
But you’re right to ask about the future. The new CEO doesn’t appear to have the same attitude towards the customer, but rather considers them to be a revenue source to be mined.
Apple has a track record of doing stuff the difficult way (Maps) or doing it in a way that makes the end result worse than the competition (Siri) just to preserve user privacy. That's why they currently have my trust in these matters.
They're also not an ad company like the two other major players, Alphabet and Meta.
Any friend or acquaintance that recorded without consent would probably not be in the friend group for much longer. If you don't trust your friends in the first place that seems the like problem to tackle.
Good question (I thought I implicitly mentioned it but I guess I didn’t).
Does it matter that we’re talking about “recording” within the envelope of typical human capability? I think that distinction does matter and the summary as described is within that region (note: we haven’t seen Apple’s product in the real world, and we know Meta’s is well outside human capability.
Remembering that you talked with Anupam and Joe about fishing is something people do.
Remembering most of the words uttered, specific phrases, etc (the hoary “on your permanent record” joke from RaRHS) is far outside human capability, which is why we have rules about actual recordings.
I consider this kind of capability a kind of prosthetic, like a hearing aid.
By the way I could have scribbled a little note after the conversation (I do this, though these days in my phone): “Joe, Anupam: fishing”. That’s a straight up (if extremely compressed) recording, but no, I would not ask permission for that either.
Not trying to persuade you BTW, just clarifying how I think about the solution space. But don’t forget that the camera case IS handled by human assistants today.
I think you have a nice story there and I wish I could just stop there and be happy with the world.
However, let's be honest. This device will not be your little notebook. This thing will be outside human capability or it would become a joke. This is not you opening a notepad and letting it do speech recognition either.
This thing will gather as much information as possible because this is what makes it good and useful. Which is scary in itself.
The tendency to make mistakes but justify them in a very very convincing way is the cherry on top of this nightmare cake.
There are endless ways to use this for bad things and I feel like apple did the same thing, they did with their trackers. They just didn't care.
I'm a SciFi reader and the fact that this exists is no big surprise to me. What is, is the speed in which we got there while simultaneously being in the most unstable political scenery I have ever seen and I grew up during the cold war.
Surely you'd also have to ban phones and other devices with microphones? All these devices can trivially be set up to record, so if your goal is full security, you should be a no phones workplace.
This is the part where you repeat the same comment and substitute in modifying the software, opening the device and putting in listening hardware, putting a microphone under your skin, attaching a microcontroller to their outside walls to analyze vibration patterns, etc. Luckily, the world doesn't operate on pedantry. They care about removing 99% of attack vectors, the remaining 1% is covered by you being on the line. If your office permits outside recording hardware, someone 'forgetting' that their device was recording is a mishap. But if it only approves certain devices and finds out you did James Bond-level gadgetry to circumvent their measures, guess what image that'll paint on you.
I imagine this is why Apple has kept the mic array and camera as separate removeable components in their devices when pretty much everything else is integrated.
If it’s an Apple device, it’s pretty easy to verify, if you’re not getting into the realm of spycraft. Open the stock recording app from the store and try to record after verifying the preferences allow recording. This is sufficient for catching bad actors who don’t have immense resources behind them. Even easier if it’s a managed device.
If you’re worried about legit espionage, you hold the meeting or do the work in a SCIF, zero devices go in or out period, metal detectors and patdowns on both entry and exit.
So to enforce "to ban phones and other devices with microphones" you'd require the user hand over this phone and you grant access to operate it. I can imagine difficulties.
> If you’re worried about legit espionage, you hold the meeting or do the work in a SCIF, zero devices go in or out period
Well the problem with that is it would bar required phones and other devices.
Many workplaces already require MDM for devices. Some don’t allow unmanaged onsite devices at all. It just depends on the sensitivity of the work. Maybe you haven’t been onsite at a defense contractor or a large financial firm, it can get very restrictive and you basically sign over a lot of your rights to work there.
> Well the problem with that is it would bar required phones and other devices.
That’s the point. Nothing goes in or out except through tightly controlled channels. SCIFs aren’t theoretical, they are in frequent use especially for anyone touching classified info. Large enterprises sometimes use similar facilities as needed for highly sensitive meetings where they can’t afford for anything to be leaked.
I imagine that some workplaces will have to become more security conscious, and others (in two-party states) will have to make it clear to employees that recording without permission from others is illegal and the company will both sue and file charges.
Agreed, I was finally considering an Apple watch after years of hating how ugly they are but this is a hard pass for me. Back to the drawing board since now I need to consider privacy when selecting a watch brand..
There has always been the myth/rumor/belief that our devices are always listening. I wonder if this is an overton window moment, get people used to a device actually listening and slowly move to all devices listening.
Our devices are always listening, if you have them set up to listen for hail words like "Siri" or "Hey Google," so I think the Overton window on listening already shifted about 10 years ago. The device actually recording/transcribing what it hears is newer, but you're right that it's becoming more and more normalized. With Granola, I think most people assume that any video call is being transcribed, even if there's no indication in the meeting.
Whatever side you come down on, privacy doesn't stand a chance against a small amount of convenience.
To look for a certain waveform, wouldn't you need to obtain all of the mic data at all times? I think that's what's implied by "listening" here, but semantics are rarely an interesting discussion.
Yeah, I can see maaaany layers to have to differentiate between when discussing. E.g., for just a few random examples:
- The microphone always vibrates from the sound waves
- The microphone is powered in a way that the sound waves change electrical readings in some way
- The electrical readings are sent to another component reading them
- A component receiving the data does some kind of unbuffered processing related to triggered actions (e.g. a clapper or a activation wave)
- Some component temporarily uses a buffer of the data but not for permanent storage (e.g. live, unstored transcription for the deaf or a 'nevermind' after a triggered activation)
- Some component stores or sends data generated by the sound, but not necessarily the original audio or even any attributions of who (e.g. voice trigger web search sends the search query as text)
- Some component generates a stored copy of the transcription with attribution of who
- Some component stores the actual audio in a way that can be later replayed
I'd say this "sounds" like a mess to deal with, but then I'd be worried about falling into a category ;).
The myth is that the devices are streaming audio back to be ingested into ad/recommendation algorithms, which is testable and generally not true.
I really wish these conversations would shift to the scarier truth: companies collect so much metadata on everyone that they can make pretty good guesses without processing what you're saying.
If you think "oh hey I was just talking about socks, how did they know to show me an ad for socks" it's likely because they accurately predicted based on your behaviors that you are highly likely to be in the market for socks right now.
Or you were at a friends house and they googled socks yesterday
I'm not kidding about how insidious this is... there's so much metadata to exploit that these companies know who you're with, when you're with them, how often you're there, etc they don't even need to explicitly ask for location because they can pick it up based on network info. In some cases they probably could tell you more about a person than that person could tell you themselves.
Facebook/Google have a history of abusing hidden iOS APIs and exploiting weaknesses in the app isolation. It's plausible they found a way to read the output stream of the text-to-speech module from their apps, until Apple was forced to fix it.
None of the companies would have an incentive to report it.
Imagine you work in a three letter agency and discover that a certain guy has a vital role in an issue you are investigating. You don't want to just bug his iPhone from now on, you want to know everything he said over the past two years when around his iPhone.
The tech is already included in the iPhone, and storage requirements are in the hundreds of Megabytes, not more. The device is a black box on purpose, and my informed opinion is that they have been logging the ambient text-to-speech since a long time.
it works, in an American context, because the states would have to take it to court and determine if this actually fell under the rules of making a recording.
Argument for, there is no recording stored anywhere thus it does not need consent.
Argument against, there is obviously a recording made. A recording is made and transmitted between devices and Apple and afterwards deleted, that this happens almost real time as the conversation does not change the fact a recording exists for some short time.
Probably Argument for wins, but assume at some point the transcriptions become nearly perfect then expect it to be litigated again.
Argument for only wins because of the weight of the lawyers they can bring to bear. Clearly ephemeral recording for the purposes of processing violates the spirit of the statute at least. And there is this, from the MGL:
The term ''interception'' means to secretly hear, secretly record,
or aid another to secretly hear or secretly record the contents of
any wire or oral communication through the use of any intercepting
device by any person other than a person given prior authority by
all parties to such communication.
Oh wait, they are not helping another person to "hear", only to see the words spoken or a summary thereof. Oops, MGL has you there too:
The term ''contents'', when used with respect to any wire or
oral communication, means any information concerning the identity
of the parties to such communication or the existence, contents,
substance, purport, or meaning of that communication.
So if you wear a watch in a conversation without consent, and then after the fact the watch tells you who was in the conversation or what it was about, that seems like a facial violation. Maybe it falls under a common carrier exemption, but then that puts legal liability on the wearer not Apple.
This may become a case of we don't enforce the laws against large companies.
since they didn't specify a specific state I suppose it probably varies, but yeah, there is obviously one case in which it looks like a pretty clear cut violation.
Even beyond this, if you create circumstances where mass commission of consequential felonies is an inevitable result, I suspect that is also illegal. 100% this just gets ignored by the Mass attorney general though.
It is "recorded" by the Apple Watch's microphone, "stored" in the Watch's Secure Exclave, transferred and "stored" in the paired iPhone's Secure Exclave where it is transcribed, then trimmed of fluff words, then uploaded to Private Cloud Compute for summarization and trimming "sensitive info", then back down to the phone, and then deleted off both Secure Exclaves. The summary is synced through iCloud to the Siri app on all your devices, is "stored" for a week, and can be saved permanently.
Apple's marketing screenshots show "Always On - Listen for conversations all day" as one of the four main options when you first turn it on.
Is the speech to text happening on the watch and then the transcription is getting summarized on the phone? If so, the argument may not be as clear cut IMO.
And if you want to use the (safety oriented!) CarPlay functionality, you HAVE to enable Siri, even if you'd rather not have the damned thing listening to you all the time.
That’s actually a good thing to me, wasn’t going to get another Apple Watch anyways - now that’s an even firmer decision now.
My reasoning so far was that I absolutely didn’t get the use out of it I envisioned and, to my even bigger surprise, the integration between Watch and iPhone wasn’t even that good…
tap to pay is handy, i would wear something just for that if it lasted all week on a charge.
having a fitness / sleep tracker that i cant wear while i sleep cuz it needs to charge defeats the purpose. doesnt quite fill during a shower.
apple also made it prohibitively cumbersome / confusing to own two devices that boot up to identical instances. why cant i have two pieces of hardware, and whichever one i pick up resumes the session. i dont want them to have two configurations, i want them to mirror each other, if a setting changes on one, it changes on the other.
The most pernicious thing about all of these matters is that now even if you don’t carry or own any kind of device, you don’t have a smart tv or any similar device or even WiFi at all … all of those around you are effectively the STASI spy network of friends and family and neighbors and random people all spying on you passively if not out or ignorance and carelessness.
Short of owning several acres and being able to essentially build a faraday home, you’re effectively going to be in the United Stasi of America.
This is not partisan matter short of the people against the ruling class tyrants that always exempt themselves of everything they impose on others. This started a long time ago and all ad insertions went along with it, that includes those the system has presented to you as your champions as well as those they’ve dialectically framed as your arch nemeses.
> Short of owning several acres and being able to essentially build a faraday home, you’re effectively going to be in the United Stasi of America.
my boss did that, and i'm not kidding. sort of a sport, and not faraday cage for home but for the office area he works in. has spent tons on this as a nerd hobby.
Highly recommend the short story “The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling” by Ted Chiang. It explores pretty much what an end state of some of these recap devices will look like in the future, and the implications of it on our personal relationships
Quote: "Watching this Apple event tout how iPhones will soon be able to record ambient audio/conversations and transcribe "high level notes" for you. It's billed as private and end-to-end encrypted, but I think the bigger harm is the normalization of always-listening devices. It's creepy and not normal."
This feels like a massive misstep for Apple. It's as if they looked at the Meta Ray Ban controversy and said "I'd like a piece of that!".
I'm pretty sure this is meant as a swipe at OpenAI's upcoming hardware as well as the various (failed) AI Pendant devices, trying to make those products just a feature on Apple's hardware but this seems incredibly risky.
Based on the number of people who have mentioned this "feature" specifically to me today "can you believe..." I have to assume Apple completely misjudged the response to this but only time will tell.
Are we going to have "No Apple Watch allowed past this point"-type signs?
Don't get me wrong, I can see the value in this feature for people in all walks of life but the abuse angle worries me quite a bit. Abusive partners, abusive governments, abusive parents, the list goes on...
Considering leaving you abusive spouse? Better turn off the watch. Talking to friends about questioning your sexuality? Don't let your religious parents touch your phone. Engaging in wrong-think? Better hope Apple doesn't roll over for the fascist government (spoiler, they will).
> Your data is not accessible to Apple either, thanks to Private Cloud Compute, and "independent security experts can verify this promise at any time". Siri Recaps auto-delete after seven days too. Apple is serious about getting users to trust this feature.
Alright. Let say I’m an independent security expert, how could I verify? I can’t, right?
“Management’s Report of Its Assertions on the Effectiveness of Its Controls over the Private Cloud Compute Provisioning System Based on the Trust Services Criteria for Security, Processing Integrity, and Confidentiality”
Maybe it protects the conscience of independent experts. Or maybe contact their media relations and let ‘em know you’ll publish a story on PCC and want to walk their cages, otherwise you’ll let the public know it was prohibited.
Personally I think it's a silly risk for Apple to do this - but don't Granola and a bunch of other high profile apps already do this? Add to that the number of meetings I'm on now filled with 'John's AI companion' recording the entire thing largely because people enable this nonsense and don't know or care how to stop it. The ship has sailed sadly. The more of this always on recording we have the more society is going to change. We already hear about young people scared to have fun because they might be recorded. Next it'll be people scared to share opinions (or anything gossipy) because it could be recorded and plausible deniability no longer exists.
It always amuses me when I hear people complaining about the privacy issues with Flock cameras (on public roads) while wearing an Apple Watch or carrying an iPhone in their pocket everywhere they go.
which part amuses you? the one where the former uploads all your data to the cloud only to be mismanaged and surveilled or the where the latter doesn't?
This is, I believe, a felony in Massachusetts.
https://www.romanolaw.com/can-i-record-a-conversation-in-mas... (Linking to discussion, not the statute, because it confirms that it is in fact enforced.)
Come to think of it, this would also include smart glasses, etc. And whatever those LG devices were doing. Paging the AG...
> This is, I believe, a felony in Massachusetts.
I hear this a lot but such a perspective elides the novelty (and the actual question):
If I devise a mechanical device that semi-faithfully creates marks that convey information about a conversation - but which does not offer a way to replay the conversation whatsoever - does that constitute a recording subject to two-party consent?
If so, how does this relate to a potential decision to write notes about a call right after as a memo/in my diary?
If so, how does this relate to having my secretary record the conversation in shorthand while listening furtively to the conversation?
Not sure why my comment merited a downvote. In any case, quoting from Mass law:
https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartIV/TitleI/Cha...
If you get content, useful or otherwise, from the recording, you are violating the law. Unless you fall under one the exemptions, which you probably don't.So first question, "devise a mechanical device" -- violates. Second, "write notes", no. Third question, "secretary record" -- no.
Fair enough, it seems the watch would be an 'intercepting device' and thus all parties would need to agree for any party to use the device for the summary function.
Right it does secretly record, because of the 15s buffer. "Record then delete" or "Record but can't access" is not acceptable, the law covers intercepting entirely.
Apple is banking on the transcripts-not-recordings and notification sounds (can't be disabled) to avoid it, but MA law is more strict.
I doubt "15s buffer" will hold up as "not a recording" and a notification that the recording is used 15 seconds later (during which a person could have walked away) won't be good enough.
AFAIK one problem is that the law is written to punish the recorder, not the provider of the technology. So it will likely slip by until someone makes a claim against an individual using it, and Apple will end up geofencing it.
One complication for geofencing is that the Mass law applies if one party is in the state. So if you're on a zoom with someone in Mass, you're still violating.
true! they have created a bit of a pickle for themselves, but I'm sure they have lawyers warmed and ready
the usual: write anything anti ai / anti apple and the marketing bots report you en masse. Same shit that happens on a multitude of websites
Lately for me it's "anything employing calm and rational critical thinking against a hivemind already dead set on misinformation gets downvoted."
I would like to raise another question. If I recap a meeting onto physical paper, by hand, is it still considered a felony?
The point I'm trying to make by this exaggeration is that sometimes the information itself is private and recording that information causes issues as well.
e.g. a military personal taking a pen and paper and listing some secret information they know of, this piece of paper by definition is also subject to regulation that is supposed to keep secret information secure.
I believe the same is true in other states. Good luck convincing a DA to bring charges against any of these corporations.
Eh, I hope Apple continues to provide this and it forces the needed discussion about how two-party consent requirements are nonsensical. Why should it be illegal for me to remember exactly a conversation that I participated in, instead of only being allowed to have a vague recollection?
Laws like this provide cover for abusers and deceivers, by preemptively spoiling objective evidence and making any accusations depend on hearsay instead.
It's not illegal for you to remember, it's illegal for you to record. There's a difference.
For me, I don't want to live in a world where if I say something embarrassing or not well thought out, someone pushes a button and the last 15 seconds is transcribed as evidence. That's a different world to the previous one where it would be someone's word fori it.
As for the fact that phone could already do this, that's not the point. Phone users have to go out of their way to make it happen so it's generally unlikely to happen. The watch feature though is always on and just waiting for you to press "save last 15 seconds"
Same with the always-on transcription feature that you dont even need to interact with. I like not having to speak with extreme precision, knowing my words are going into some record.
> Eh, I hope Apple continues to provide this and it forces the needed discussion about how two-party consent requirements are nonsensical
Really disagree on this, I think all states should be two party consent, personally.
> Why should it be illegal for me to remember exactly a conversation that I participated in, instead of only being allowed to have a vague recollection?
It's not illegal, it's just that the other person has to know that you're doing that and consent to it.
Giving them the chance to walk away or to tell a person and their Meta glasses to fuck off is important.
People are fucking liars. Everyone, everywhere, always.
I want to record every conversation surreptitiously, because that’s the only way to catch them.
The reason we can’t is because our politicians and legislators are the biggest liars of them all. It would spell their immediate downfall.
Our politicians and legislators lie on camera constantly. But it doesn't really seem to matter much these days. So I'm not sure why this would make a difference.
Everyone being liars means you and I are both liars, same as the politicians. But the politicians have the power and if we remove two party consent then they get to surreptitiously record you and leverage that power. It doesnt even the power playing field.
We can alreay write notes down for every conversation and then send them to the person involved saying "we talked about X, Y, and Z." That last step is the key because it lets them object in writing if you mischaracterize things. From a "catching someone in a lie" the most important step is that one, because you form a paper trail where the other party can correct or contest what was written and bring that up now, and the fact that they didn't is itself evidence in case of a dispute later. The apple watch feature doesn't do that, it just dragnets everything. Even if it recorded the audio, we are in a faked-audio world so unless you have some signal that they agreed that they said a thing ahead of time, they can always deny it later.
Yes, let’s do something illegal to force a discussion. A discussion that already happened when writing the law…
Alarming normalisation. Issues I see off the top of my head:
- Governments can now learn even more about you when they confiscate your device.
- Devices confiscated at airports provide a full history of you.
- Privacy issues: will my conversation with someone using this tech truly be private? Do I have to be careful what I say around everyone by default? Always have clear thought out opinions?
- Personal relations: spouses, friends, relatives demanding to see your history to check up on you and what you've been 'thinking'?
- Society where nothing can be assumed to be private by default
- Slippery slope to a future where you have always on location, cameras, mics for everyone with a mobile device. A complete reshaping of society. Therefore being unable to count on previous societal norms
Anyone got any other issues they can think of?
We already have the answer to many of these questions.
With "use it or loose it" brain feature, I don't really want my natural recap skill to atrophy to make me dependent on this sort of tech. Not considering that they can secretly ship other monitoring features to constantly scan for certain discussions.
Crazy that this is about to be normalized. Can't help but think the discourse of "they already record everything anyway" of the past couple years (even in the absence of complete proof) has played a part.
Never thought it would be Apple to normalize it either. I’ve been in the ecosystem because they have a proven track record of privacy and security and taking principled stands.
I’m sure the NSA is salivating at this and I don’t trust the current administration not to legislate back doors.
Terrible misstep from Apple from my perspective. This is their “they removed Don’t Be Evil from the website” moment for me.
There's been plenty of evidence that nothing is recorded or sent back, hardly "absence of complete proof". People have identified basically everything coming from the network stack of an iPhone.
This is already normalized in most modern office buildings. There are video and audio recording devices in virtually all common areas. This started a bit after private offices were done away with.
>There's been plenty of evidence that nothing is recorded or sent back, hardly "absence of complete proof".
You may have a different understanding of the word "complete" than the standard definition.
Unless you are claiming the verifiers kept the watches being tested under constant survellance for several years, the proof you are alluding to may only prove that it is not routinely sending or recording data. It does not prove they can't turn it on whenever they feel like it, or when obeying a time-limited and geofenced mass surveillance order.
Uh sorry guys I phrased it weird I meant "complete absence of proof" more like.
Yes, that would be accurate :)
I mean, anything with a microphone or camera (and some things without) can theoretically be used to listen to/record you at any given time for a myriad of reasons.
If you are worried about such a device being on your person, I think the easy solution is just not to wear or buy one.
In theory any device with a microphone and an internet connection can record everything and send it off to some remote server, but in practice there was really no evidence of this happening on any significant scale for a long time. It is easy to see how this would make a difference for most people. But already there was an attitude among some people of "we all carry a microphone in our pocket, there is no privacy anymore".
Then voice-activated devices came out which (without making a secret of it) started recording after detecting some watchword, of course there were false positives but most normal people didn't really seem to care about that. Again this was used by the most paranoid or anti-technology people as an argument that "see, they're really recording everything like we've been saying all along".
Now a device comes out which explicitly and openly records everything within reach and applies AI analysis to it, and the precise people who should be most against it act like it's no big deal because supposedly this was already happening anyway - while, on the contrary, I think this is precisely the moment where the line is being crossed in a way that will have actual negative consequences on society, and this is the time to take a stand against it.
So ironically we see that the hyper-activistic all-or-nothing attitude is actually working against the very interests that its proponents claim to want to protect.
> People have identified basically everything coming from the network stack of an iPhone.
And there was me hoping it was sufficiently encrypted.
It is. When you have an unlocked device and developer certs you can do a lot.
> People have identified basically everything coming from the network stack of an iPhone.
Scary. Shouldn't it be encrypted?
It is encrypted. When you can run software on a device with a developer cert you can do a lot.
Even if it is, the software on the device could theoretically do whatever it wants with the data before it's encrypted/uploaded, and if it's sent to Apple, they could do whatever they want with it too.
I like the idea (we’ll see about the execs). It seems to record what I would remember anyway (“yesterday you and Joe and Anupam talked about going fishing a chose a date”) unless I was distracted.
It’s like the cameras in the glasses. If all they said is what _I_ know (“That’s Julie who worked in the same group as you at company Z three years ago. You also ran into her at the grocery store shortly after you quit Z and it was awkward” but not tell me anything about Julie I wouldn’t know, like spouse or where she now works or anything like that”) it would be an excellent prosthesis. Public figures have humans who do this for them.
Unfortunately the glasses makers don’t understand the difference and make it too general and privacy destroying. This Apple thing might be OK in my opinion..but the reality remains to be seen.
I have prosopagnosia. Glasses that could tell me the name of the person talking to me would be amazing. But not if I have to give big tech data about everyone around me
I have it as well. This is how i explain it to regular folks: most people have an whole neural network dedicated to processing the human face, memorizing its feutures and matching them to the people in front of them. But when they look at trees they cant really distinguish a pine tree from another pine tree, unless the differences are extreme: one is brunt down, or has a weird shaped trunk, etc. If they try to recall a specific pine tree all they can recall is a messy green spiky blob. Why? Because their brain has no neural network dedicated to identifying trees. For us, the human face is as distinguishable as a tree
Good way to describe it. Hard to relay to people what it is like walking into a crowded room and not be able to find the people you are meeting without one of them waving.
I try to explain it is a lot like the subway scenes from Pink Floyd's "The Wall". Everyone has the same distorted indistinguishable face.
Very likely I have lost a lot of "new friends" and business contacts from walking past not recognizing them.
When someone comes up with smart glasses with a fully local setup, I'll be the first to buy.
But I'm not wearing something where the content might get viewed by a random person in Nigeria for "cataloging content".
I would love to have AI that can help support my fragmented memory. As my mom said, I'd forget my head if it wasn't attached. However, this requires a lot of TRUST with the company this access. Apple is the only big tech I could trust but I'm still unsure.
Even if you can trust them don’t, you cannot be sure you will trust them tomorrow.
And even if you trust Apple, do you trust the government will not abuse this access? Forever into the future?
Apple has clearly done things that make it impossible for them to comply with such requests by not keeping certain data in the first place and/or doing work locally (in the customer’s device) to which it doesn’t have access. This is even in a couple of cases when the result can be inconvenient for the end user (e.g. they can’t restore lost data).
But you’re right to ask about the future. The new CEO doesn’t appear to have the same attitude towards the customer, but rather considers them to be a revenue source to be mined.
Apple has a track record of doing stuff the difficult way (Maps) or doing it in a way that makes the end result worse than the competition (Siri) just to preserve user privacy. That's why they currently have my trust in these matters.
They're also not an ad company like the two other major players, Alphabet and Meta.
Would you ask Joe and Anupam for their consent to be recorded?
I doubt it and this is the actual problem here with those glasses and now the watch.
Any friend or acquaintance that recorded without consent would probably not be in the friend group for much longer. If you don't trust your friends in the first place that seems the like problem to tackle.
Good question (I thought I implicitly mentioned it but I guess I didn’t).
Does it matter that we’re talking about “recording” within the envelope of typical human capability? I think that distinction does matter and the summary as described is within that region (note: we haven’t seen Apple’s product in the real world, and we know Meta’s is well outside human capability.
Remembering that you talked with Anupam and Joe about fishing is something people do.
Remembering most of the words uttered, specific phrases, etc (the hoary “on your permanent record” joke from RaRHS) is far outside human capability, which is why we have rules about actual recordings.
I consider this kind of capability a kind of prosthetic, like a hearing aid.
By the way I could have scribbled a little note after the conversation (I do this, though these days in my phone): “Joe, Anupam: fishing”. That’s a straight up (if extremely compressed) recording, but no, I would not ask permission for that either.
Not trying to persuade you BTW, just clarifying how I think about the solution space. But don’t forget that the camera case IS handled by human assistants today.
I think you have a nice story there and I wish I could just stop there and be happy with the world.
However, let's be honest. This device will not be your little notebook. This thing will be outside human capability or it would become a joke. This is not you opening a notepad and letting it do speech recognition either. This thing will gather as much information as possible because this is what makes it good and useful. Which is scary in itself.
The tendency to make mistakes but justify them in a very very convincing way is the cherry on top of this nightmare cake.
There are endless ways to use this for bad things and I feel like apple did the same thing, they did with their trackers. They just didn't care.
I'm a SciFi reader and the fact that this exists is no big surprise to me. What is, is the speed in which we got there while simultaneously being in the most unstable political scenery I have ever seen and I grew up during the cold war.
That’s going to be a hell of a security risk for us. I think it’ll be a no watches policy in the office going forward.
Surely you'd also have to ban phones and other devices with microphones? All these devices can trivially be set up to record, so if your goal is full security, you should be a no phones workplace.
Given how much people tend to get distracted by their phones, I am surprised most workplaces do not have a phone ban.
Already do that in some situations.
The watches have had a microphone for ages haven’t they?
Why does this feature change things? Unless it can’t be turned off?
Yeah but it's pretty obvious when someone has one recording. Now it's not. And it's impossible to tell which version of the watch people have.
My device has no microphone. Promise.
How would you verify?
It’s the other way around - for secure environments there is an approved device list. If your device is not on that list, it does not go in.
There is also an approved human list. And the approved humans carry responsibility and consequence when going into the space.
My device is listed model XYZ. Promise.
How would you verify?
Look at it.
This is the part where you repeat the same comment and substitute in modifying the software, opening the device and putting in listening hardware, putting a microphone under your skin, attaching a microcontroller to their outside walls to analyze vibration patterns, etc. Luckily, the world doesn't operate on pedantry. They care about removing 99% of attack vectors, the remaining 1% is covered by you being on the line. If your office permits outside recording hardware, someone 'forgetting' that their device was recording is a mishap. But if it only approves certain devices and finds out you did James Bond-level gadgetry to circumvent their measures, guess what image that'll paint on you.
> But if it only approves certain devices and finds out
I was thinking more of the cases it doesn't find out. 1% fail can be quite a lot.
Some services offer modified devices without a camera or mic for high-security environments. https://www.gadgetreview.com/the-iphone-with-no-camera-and-w...
I imagine this is why Apple has kept the mic array and camera as separate removeable components in their devices when pretty much everything else is integrated.
I have not readded those components. Promise.
How would you verify?
If it’s an Apple device, it’s pretty easy to verify, if you’re not getting into the realm of spycraft. Open the stock recording app from the store and try to record after verifying the preferences allow recording. This is sufficient for catching bad actors who don’t have immense resources behind them. Even easier if it’s a managed device.
If you’re worried about legit espionage, you hold the meeting or do the work in a SCIF, zero devices go in or out period, metal detectors and patdowns on both entry and exit.
So to enforce "to ban phones and other devices with microphones" you'd require the user hand over this phone and you grant access to operate it. I can imagine difficulties.
> If you’re worried about legit espionage, you hold the meeting or do the work in a SCIF, zero devices go in or out period
Well the problem with that is it would bar required phones and other devices.
Many workplaces already require MDM for devices. Some don’t allow unmanaged onsite devices at all. It just depends on the sensitivity of the work. Maybe you haven’t been onsite at a defense contractor or a large financial firm, it can get very restrictive and you basically sign over a lot of your rights to work there.
> Well the problem with that is it would bar required phones and other devices.
That’s the point. Nothing goes in or out except through tightly controlled channels. SCIFs aren’t theoretical, they are in frequent use especially for anyone touching classified info. Large enterprises sometimes use similar facilities as needed for highly sensitive meetings where they can’t afford for anything to be leaked.
Sure, but we're discussing "the office". I can imagine this ban workplaces that aren't highly security concious.
I imagine that some workplaces will have to become more security conscious, and others (in two-party states) will have to make it clear to employees that recording without permission from others is illegal and the company will both sue and file charges.
The irony is that that would probably be Apple's policy with its own offices if a competitor came up with such a feature.
Agreed, I was finally considering an Apple watch after years of hating how ugly they are but this is a hard pass for me. Back to the drawing board since now I need to consider privacy when selecting a watch brand..
Got a shitty old Casio here. Does the job.
Sounds like a mighty fine watch. Simple, cheap, fulfills requirements with no scope creep.
Keeps time better than my friend's Rolex too :)
No watches, no glasses and soon no implants....
There has always been the myth/rumor/belief that our devices are always listening. I wonder if this is an overton window moment, get people used to a device actually listening and slowly move to all devices listening.
Our devices are always listening, if you have them set up to listen for hail words like "Siri" or "Hey Google," so I think the Overton window on listening already shifted about 10 years ago. The device actually recording/transcribing what it hears is newer, but you're right that it's becoming more and more normalized. With Granola, I think most people assume that any video call is being transcribed, even if there's no indication in the meeting.
Whatever side you come down on, privacy doesn't stand a chance against a small amount of convenience.
It depends what you mean by ‘listening’. If you look at how this actually works - it’s basically only ever looking for a certain waveform
‘Listening’ sort of implies intelligence is paying attention to what is said. It’s more ‘hearing’ than ‘listening’
There are documents on how these activation words work
To look for a certain waveform, wouldn't you need to obtain all of the mic data at all times? I think that's what's implied by "listening" here, but semantics are rarely an interesting discussion.
Yeah, I can see maaaany layers to have to differentiate between when discussing. E.g., for just a few random examples:
- The microphone always vibrates from the sound waves
- The microphone is powered in a way that the sound waves change electrical readings in some way
- The electrical readings are sent to another component reading them
- A component receiving the data does some kind of unbuffered processing related to triggered actions (e.g. a clapper or a activation wave)
- Some component temporarily uses a buffer of the data but not for permanent storage (e.g. live, unstored transcription for the deaf or a 'nevermind' after a triggered activation)
- Some component stores or sends data generated by the sound, but not necessarily the original audio or even any attributions of who (e.g. voice trigger web search sends the search query as text)
- Some component generates a stored copy of the transcription with attribution of who
- Some component stores the actual audio in a way that can be later replayed
I'd say this "sounds" like a mess to deal with, but then I'd be worried about falling into a category ;).
A Clapper[0] from the 80s "looked for a certain waveform", but definitely didn't "listen".
What the smart speakers and devices do with the keyword is closer to the clapper than an actual transcription.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Clapper
The myth is that the devices are streaming audio back to be ingested into ad/recommendation algorithms, which is testable and generally not true.
I really wish these conversations would shift to the scarier truth: companies collect so much metadata on everyone that they can make pretty good guesses without processing what you're saying.
If you think "oh hey I was just talking about socks, how did they know to show me an ad for socks" it's likely because they accurately predicted based on your behaviors that you are highly likely to be in the market for socks right now.
> If you think "oh hey I was just talking about socks, how did they know to show me an ad for socks"
Or you’re talking about socks because of the previous ad for socks you saw. I suspect ads drive our collective behaviour more than we realize.
Or you were at a friends house and they googled socks yesterday
I'm not kidding about how insidious this is... there's so much metadata to exploit that these companies know who you're with, when you're with them, how often you're there, etc they don't even need to explicitly ask for location because they can pick it up based on network info. In some cases they probably could tell you more about a person than that person could tell you themselves.
Facebook/Google have a history of abusing hidden iOS APIs and exploiting weaknesses in the app isolation. It's plausible they found a way to read the output stream of the text-to-speech module from their apps, until Apple was forced to fix it.
None of the companies would have an incentive to report it.
genearlly not true except LG just got caught making it true
right, generally not true but still something we need watchdogs regularly checking
Imagine you work in a three letter agency and discover that a certain guy has a vital role in an issue you are investigating. You don't want to just bug his iPhone from now on, you want to know everything he said over the past two years when around his iPhone.
The tech is already included in the iPhone, and storage requirements are in the hundreds of Megabytes, not more. The device is a black box on purpose, and my informed opinion is that they have been logging the ambient text-to-speech since a long time.
How does this work in two party consent states? It seems nuts on the face of it.
I guess they devolve liability onto the user and wash their hands of it?
it works, in an American context, because the states would have to take it to court and determine if this actually fell under the rules of making a recording.
Argument for, there is no recording stored anywhere thus it does not need consent.
Argument against, there is obviously a recording made. A recording is made and transmitted between devices and Apple and afterwards deleted, that this happens almost real time as the conversation does not change the fact a recording exists for some short time.
Probably Argument for wins, but assume at some point the transcriptions become nearly perfect then expect it to be litigated again.
Argument for only wins because of the weight of the lawyers they can bring to bear. Clearly ephemeral recording for the purposes of processing violates the spirit of the statute at least. And there is this, from the MGL:
https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartIV/TitleI/Cha...Oh wait, they are not helping another person to "hear", only to see the words spoken or a summary thereof. Oops, MGL has you there too:
So if you wear a watch in a conversation without consent, and then after the fact the watch tells you who was in the conversation or what it was about, that seems like a facial violation. Maybe it falls under a common carrier exemption, but then that puts legal liability on the wearer not Apple.This may become a case of we don't enforce the laws against large companies.
since they didn't specify a specific state I suppose it probably varies, but yeah, there is obviously one case in which it looks like a pretty clear cut violation.
> This may become a case of we don't enforce the laws against large companies.
Why would Apple be a party here at all? Would Sony be a party if someone records another with a walkman?
If the Walkman is recording all the time, then of course they would be a party.
Apple is potentially a party because Apple processes and provides a recap of what was processed.
Why would the manufacturer of a recording device be liable for its use counter to law?
Even beyond this, if you create circumstances where mass commission of consequential felonies is an inevitable result, I suspect that is also illegal. 100% this just gets ignored by the Mass attorney general though.
What is the law you are basing your theory?
It is "not stored" "not recorded".
It is "recorded" by the Apple Watch's microphone, "stored" in the Watch's Secure Exclave, transferred and "stored" in the paired iPhone's Secure Exclave where it is transcribed, then trimmed of fluff words, then uploaded to Private Cloud Compute for summarization and trimming "sensitive info", then back down to the phone, and then deleted off both Secure Exclaves. The summary is synced through iCloud to the Siri app on all your devices, is "stored" for a week, and can be saved permanently.
Apple's marketing screenshots show "Always On - Listen for conversations all day" as one of the four main options when you first turn it on.
Is the speech to text happening on the watch and then the transcription is getting summarized on the phone? If so, the argument may not be as clear cut IMO.
The speech to text is on the phone and the summary is on Apple's cloud.
Nice, no need for an LG TV anymore
Siri cannot tell whether I'm speaking English or French. It's not even close.
I have manually corrected "sale" to "sail" a thousand times post dictation, and Siri doesn't notice, it's "sale" always.
This transcription feature is gonna be a sad joke. This is Apple doubling-down on shit that doesn't work, and has never really worked.
And if you want to use the (safety oriented!) CarPlay functionality, you HAVE to enable Siri, even if you'd rather not have the damned thing listening to you all the time.
That’s actually a good thing to me, wasn’t going to get another Apple Watch anyways - now that’s an even firmer decision now.
My reasoning so far was that I absolutely didn’t get the use out of it I envisioned and, to my even bigger surprise, the integration between Watch and iPhone wasn’t even that good…
Hence why I wear an old pebble to this day. Smart where it matters but not a data siphoning device.
I don’t think it bothers me, as long as the audio isn’t stored… but I can definitely see why it would bother some people.
The device microphones are already always listening, this just makes use of that sound a lot more than just listening for “hey siri”.
Never bought a smartwatch, even when I was in love with the Pebble. I hate having to charge it every day. I don't need notifications on my wrist.
I have a Casio that has a 10 years battery and dual timezone I need when I travel and a TAG Heuer when I need a "better looking" watch.
I don't need to track steps or trainings. Even when I did it was with stupid gadgets like early fitbit bands without displays.
When I will need something that will alert people when I fall (in many years from now, hopefully) I will use a specialized device.
* You don't need a smartwatch. *
You said a bunch of statements about yourself, and then made a statement about me.
You should have concluded "I don't need a smartwatch."
Not everyone has the same needs.
> Not everyone has the same needs.
True, but almost all of the people don't really need a smartwatch :)
One saved my aunt's life. But I suppose I didn't really need an aunt, right?
tap to pay is handy, i would wear something just for that if it lasted all week on a charge.
having a fitness / sleep tracker that i cant wear while i sleep cuz it needs to charge defeats the purpose. doesnt quite fill during a shower.
apple also made it prohibitively cumbersome / confusing to own two devices that boot up to identical instances. why cant i have two pieces of hardware, and whichever one i pick up resumes the session. i dont want them to have two configurations, i want them to mirror each other, if a setting changes on one, it changes on the other.
> tap to pay is handy, i would wear something just for that if it lasted all week on a charge.
https://www.swatch.com/en-us/swatch-pay/how-it-works.html
(just the first that comes to my mind, no battery usage)
Sadly not supported in the USA.
there might be others. this is the first that came to my mind
Garmin Pay? My Vivoactive lasts about 7-8 days with sleep tracking and phone notifications. 20 days if you disable phone connectivity.
fwiw, the new pebble lasts a week on a charge and it is great. but agree most of the smart features are still useless.
It's great except for the side button durability. I had to throw my latest Pebble out because of that.
>I hate having to charge it every day
My smartwatch lasts 10-14 days.
>I don't need notifications on my wrist
I do, as I hate missing the few calls I get, and I love being woken up by a vibration on my wrist instead of a blaring alarm.
I won't address the rest as it's quite subjective, but honestly saying you don’t need a smartwatch is bordering on ragebait.
The most pernicious thing about all of these matters is that now even if you don’t carry or own any kind of device, you don’t have a smart tv or any similar device or even WiFi at all … all of those around you are effectively the STASI spy network of friends and family and neighbors and random people all spying on you passively if not out or ignorance and carelessness.
Short of owning several acres and being able to essentially build a faraday home, you’re effectively going to be in the United Stasi of America.
This is not partisan matter short of the people against the ruling class tyrants that always exempt themselves of everything they impose on others. This started a long time ago and all ad insertions went along with it, that includes those the system has presented to you as your champions as well as those they’ve dialectically framed as your arch nemeses.
> Short of owning several acres and being able to essentially build a faraday home, you’re effectively going to be in the United Stasi of America.
my boss did that, and i'm not kidding. sort of a sport, and not faraday cage for home but for the office area he works in. has spent tons on this as a nerd hobby.
built a meeting bot once, forgot the consent chime, legal killed it same week
Highly recommend the short story “The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling” by Ted Chiang. It explores pretty much what an end state of some of these recap devices will look like in the future, and the implications of it on our personal relationships
Quote: "Watching this Apple event tout how iPhones will soon be able to record ambient audio/conversations and transcribe "high level notes" for you. It's billed as private and end-to-end encrypted, but I think the bigger harm is the normalization of always-listening devices. It's creepy and not normal."
https://mastodon.social/@zackwhittaker/117242363654801025
Yea were they not paying attention during the Microsoft Recall debacle?
They hope they can get away with it, because their fanboys will defend them for anything.
I’m audhd - I LOVE this. It will be so helpful (I hope)
This feature will not make it to release.
Just like Recall, it's completely DOA.
Can this be disabled?
You are the product.
Thanks to Hey Siri, your Apple Watch is always listening.
Apply the test: What would Steve have said?
A: Over my dead body!
This feels like a massive misstep for Apple. It's as if they looked at the Meta Ray Ban controversy and said "I'd like a piece of that!".
I'm pretty sure this is meant as a swipe at OpenAI's upcoming hardware as well as the various (failed) AI Pendant devices, trying to make those products just a feature on Apple's hardware but this seems incredibly risky.
Based on the number of people who have mentioned this "feature" specifically to me today "can you believe..." I have to assume Apple completely misjudged the response to this but only time will tell.
Are we going to have "No Apple Watch allowed past this point"-type signs?
Don't get me wrong, I can see the value in this feature for people in all walks of life but the abuse angle worries me quite a bit. Abusive partners, abusive governments, abusive parents, the list goes on...
Considering leaving you abusive spouse? Better turn off the watch. Talking to friends about questioning your sexuality? Don't let your religious parents touch your phone. Engaging in wrong-think? Better hope Apple doesn't roll over for the fascist government (spoiler, they will).
The risks seem to greatly outweigh the rewards.
I lost count how many times my boss will just flat out lie. This will be a very useful feature.
...for your boss. "Here's the Siri summary."
Sincerely, what the fuck Apple?
> Your data is not accessible to Apple either, thanks to Private Cloud Compute, and "independent security experts can verify this promise at any time". Siri Recaps auto-delete after seven days too. Apple is serious about getting users to trust this feature.
Alright. Let say I’m an independent security expert, how could I verify? I can’t, right?
https://security.apple.com/blog/pcc-security-research/
But I have to trust them that they run what they present.
Join Ernst & Young first?
https://help.apple.com/pdf/certifications/en_US/2025-Apple-P...
Maybe it protects the conscience of independent experts. Or maybe contact their media relations and let ‘em know you’ll publish a story on PCC and want to walk their cages, otherwise you’ll let the public know it was prohibited.Personally I think it's a silly risk for Apple to do this - but don't Granola and a bunch of other high profile apps already do this? Add to that the number of meetings I'm on now filled with 'John's AI companion' recording the entire thing largely because people enable this nonsense and don't know or care how to stop it. The ship has sailed sadly. The more of this always on recording we have the more society is going to change. We already hear about young people scared to have fun because they might be recorded. Next it'll be people scared to share opinions (or anything gossipy) because it could be recorded and plausible deniability no longer exists.
> Speakers are not identified
Apple thinks that's a benefit, apparently.
It’s probably for legal reasons
None I know of.
Much more likely brand reputation management.
I can only talk for Switzerland, but here you can’t systematically create a file on people without breaking privacy laws, this would probably qualify
Um. Apple?
It always amuses me when I hear people complaining about the privacy issues with Flock cameras (on public roads) while wearing an Apple Watch or carrying an iPhone in their pocket everywhere they go.
which part amuses you? the one where the former uploads all your data to the cloud only to be mismanaged and surveilled or the where the latter doesn't?