So on this “Copilot+ Recall” or whatever it’s called..

Watch this for context: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C7xGJnTPGQP/?igsh=MW43NW5wNjJpczFsOA==

This seems like straight-up purposefully negligent doesn’t it? This shit is stored in plain text?! For real?! I mean obviously this concept was already about as ridiculous as it could get, but storing its database locally in plain text just takes it 3 levels of shit higher.

Is Microsoft doing this because they want this product to fail for some reason? Do they want Enterprises and home user’s alike to mass migrate to other Operating systems? Are they tired of being the defacto OS?

Are you ready to climb shit-mountain with me? Here we go…

The “conspiracy theorist” in me says it’s even more sinister than that lol.. Given that Microsoft has proven repeatedly what their game plan looks like, I’d imagine what comes next is something like this:

Step 1: Pretend to take the outrage to heart and pull back by conceding on functionality to make the gross disrespect of personal autonomy and sovereignty slightly more acceptable, but still worthy of outrage by its own merit. You know, bump that boundary back a little bit.

Step 2: Quietly reintroduce all of the originally planned features (and then some) over the course of the next year or two, eventually surpassing (in level of outrageousness) the original thing.

I don’t know.. I’m not generally one of those “sheeple” people, I tend to think that people, by-and-large, should be viewed with a more individual lens and I don’t think it’s very helpful to accept what the internet looks like (especially social media) as a proxy for my concept of “society.”

That being said… To me, each step on this path just feels like the next step in the programming of the masses. Right now, I do see a lot of outrage, but I’ve seen a lot of outrage before, that eventually gave way to full acceptance.

Look at how far we’ve come from “watergate” to now; where we all know with certainty that all the devices around us (including TVs and appliances… but that might change soon? ) are recording everything we say out loud (and everything we type into certain applications as well…) and we’ve all accepted it. This acceptance (I think) has accelerated due to the internet, and also I think that these affecters-of-perception (Microsoft? A hive-mind of Marketing Agencies? Large corporations in general? CIA? NSA? lololol who knows!) have had more time to hone their craft and realized that they can push boundaries farther and faster than originally thought.

A few years ago every time I suggested that all of our devices were listening and logging (I had proven it to myself on a number of occasions) people around me would roll their eyes. They never said this out loud, but I guarantee they were thinking “oh geez.. yeah I forgot that Seth guy is kind of a conspiracy theorist lol.”

I see a different attitude now. They still roll their eyes, but it’s for a different reason. Now it’s something like “oh geez.. one of these people who cares that we’re under constant surveillance. I like personalized ads! They make my buying experience faster and more convenient! teehee!”

This change in attitude is exactly what I’m talking about. With this acceptance in mind, I feel like this isn’t going to be the end of Microsoft, and they are not going to change their vision for this feature aside from whatever initial tweaks they come up with to squelch the current outrage, instead I’m viewing this feature as inevitable, and I think instead we’re seeing here is the absolute end of any semblance of personal autonomy and sovereignty, at least where computing is involved…

Who wants this feature?

Ask yourself: Who could possibly want this feature? Do you recall ever wishing your computer could tell you what was on your screen last week or last month? The closest I get to that need is when I’m trying to remember an article I was reading or a video I was watching, but my browser’s history and youtube history, both being searchable, have already got me covered there. I don’t think any person asked for this, and I don’t think that at this point Microsoft uses “what people want” in their design decisions for Windows either lol.

This is where my actual inner “conspiracy theorist” comes out. If you didn’t want this feature, and I didn’t want this feature… Who… Who did want this feature?

I’m going to take a stab and say it’s whoever also decided this database should be stored in plain text. I guarantee even if they “fix” this and encrypt this database in the future, they will still leave the door propped open in some way.

Thoughts on improving this situation

I have a friend who has decided to get a faraday cage and start keeping his family’s devices in it whenever they’re not in use. He’s a security nut and consults on cyber security for a living, so you might argue he’s prone to being overly cautious… but is he though? It’s absolutely bonkers to me that this is a real thing. I’ve been thinking through it… On the one hand I think it’s completely insane to accept this reality and put your devices inside of… a faraday cage?? How completely extra is that? But at the same time.. We’re all in this very real situation where we literally NEED these devices to exist in our culture and economy, but they present the very real downside of having to be a complacent subject to constant surveillance in order to participate.. Sure, the surveillance is “opt-in” but how can a human being be an effective member of society and capable of economic output without opting in? You really can’t, at least in many industries.. So unless I quit doing tech stuff and move north to become a lumberjack (I feel like there’s a “logger” pun in here somewhere) I might actually have to consider it.. ?

I do feel like we need to come together and take back some control or something.. I’m not sure how though. The legislation I linked above is a step in the right direction, but I don’t think we should rely completely on our lawmakers since we don’t know how many of them actually have our best interests in mind.

Closing thoughts

I’m on the fence about the faraday cage lol, but at least this whole “Recall” situation to some extent further validates my decision many years ago to remove Microsoft from my life. If only I could remove them from my work. They own github and vscode so it’s tough. I try to replace those a few times a year and I always go back. If you click “Show Comments” below, you’ll notice that comments on this blog are hosted at github… So any discussion that arises on this article is on a platform owned by Microsoft! Sheeeit! There might be some comments system building in my future 😞

If anyone knows another free/cheap/easy comments system (that handles bots) that could work well with Hugo, let me know!