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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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..
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.
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.
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 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.
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?
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.
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."
> 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.
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.
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.
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
Nice, no need for an LG TV anymore
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Already do that in some situations.
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.
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.
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.
No watches, no glasses and soon no implants....
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.
> People have identified basically everything coming from the network stack of an iPhone.
Scary. Shouldn't it be encrypted?
>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.
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.
> 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?
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 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.
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.
Hence why I wear an old pebble to this day. Smart where it matters but not a data siphoning device.
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?
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…
I lost count how many times my boss will just flat out lie. This will be a very useful feature.
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”.
built a meeting bot once, forgot the consent chime, legal killed it same week
Thanks to Hey Siri, your Apple Watch is always listening.
I’m audhd - I LOVE this. It will be so helpful (I hope)
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 :)
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)
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.
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.
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?
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.https://security.apple.com/blog/pcc-security-research/
Um. Apple?
You are the product.
> Speakers are not identified
Apple thinks that's a benefit, apparently.
It’s probably for legal reasons
[delayed]
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.