Technology

if i were designing a recall program, here's how i would do it: it would take a screenshot every five seconds, OCR it, then run it through local quantized image recognition and word association neural networks, and then toss everything into a CryFS vault. when launching the recall program, you have to provide the password to unlock the vault so it can read and write to it. it can only run in the foreground (so you have to keep the window open for it to run, no closing it and forgetting about it) and it will display a status indicator in your system tray that provides a menu to pause or stop recording. afterwards, you can mark any text or region of the screen for redaction, and it'll redact it across all screenshots and delete it from the database; you can delete individual screenshots or entire periods of time; and there will be an easily accessible self-destruct option that shreds the database (i.e. overwriting it with random garbage 21 times before deleting it off the disk). this is all offline and the application will not request network access

i'm just making this up on the fly, so there are absolutely security and privacy considerations I absolutely forgot about, but this is the bare minimum i would like to see

When you go on the internet you are accessing content on other people's computers. You are saying, "I want such and such document". There's an inherent lack of privacy in browsing the internet. You can try to be private about it, but ultimately you're not changing that you're requesting data from other people's computers and sending them data.

When you are doing something else on your PC besides browsing the web, Recall is still taking screenshots and tracking you. What apps you use, pictures you view, and many other things that might be completely offline and you don't necessarily want a history of stored on your PC, with screenshots and searchable summaries. Do you want each and every one of your fap sessions recorded? Why would you want any of your offline activity recorded?

What if you forget to pause this feature and someone finds these screenshots? Who cares, right? What if your a closeted gay teen living in a conservative country and your family finds the history?

Then there are people who don't understand computers using offline business software for accounting, or whatever, and even if they store their data files on an encrypted drive or something, Recall is taking screenshots of everything they do. If they don't even know its happening, their PC could have years of data that could be stollen from them at any point in the future. Even if they never open those encrypted files again. Obviously, if their computer is pwned, then the hackers could just take the enencrypted files when they're next accessed, but Recall snapshots everything all the time, even if you delete it.

Edit a self nude photo on your PC and forget to turn off Recall, and then layer decide to delete the photo... Too bad, Recall still has it.

It's a feature that's... ok if you want it, but it should not be part of the operating system, and it definitely shouldn't be opt-out. It should be an app that you install with deliberate purpose if and only if you want itand understand the security and privacy risks.

Microsoft instead wants to install it by default and probably turn it on by default. Even if it ends up being opt-in, MS has a long history of asking people to enable features in misleading ways. And the vast majority of Windows users don't understand computers!