Thanks to Siri Recaps, your Apple Watch is always listening

132 pointsposted 5 hours ago
by geox
(techradar.com)

109 Comments

encyclopedism

21 minutes ago

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?

nerbert

8 minutes ago

We already have the answer to many of these questions.

jsw97

3 hours ago

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...

bonsai_spool

3 hours ago

> 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?

jsw97

3 hours ago

Not sure why my comment merited a downvote. In any case, quoting from Mass law:

https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartIV/TitleI/Cha...

    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.

bonsai_spool

3 hours ago

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.

PyWoody

3 hours ago

  Not sure why my comment merited a downvote.
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.

monegator

2 hours ago

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

akersten

an hour ago

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.

socalgal2

16 minutes ago

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"

whoamii

an hour ago

Yes, let’s do something illegal to force a discussion. A discussion that already happened when writing the law…

magicalist

an hour ago

> 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.

voakbasda

28 minutes ago

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.

joekrill

7 minutes ago

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.

lelandbatey

9 minutes ago

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.

voakbasda

31 minutes ago

I believe the same is true in other states. Good luck convincing a DA to bring charges against any of these corporations.

haute_cuisine

3 hours ago

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.

Molitor5901

3 hours ago

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.

bensyverson

2 hours ago

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.

RASBR89

24 minutes ago

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

prophesi

12 minutes ago

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.

micromacrofoot

42 minutes ago

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.

sandcat_

21 minutes ago

> 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.

micromacrofoot

4 minutes ago

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

socalgal2

14 minutes ago

genearlly not true except LG just got caught making it true

micromacrofoot

3 minutes ago

right, generally not true but still something we need watchdogs regularly checking

bflesch

29 minutes ago

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.

bflesch

31 minutes ago

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.

bondarchuk

4 hours ago

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.

throwatdem12311

4 hours ago

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.

Schiendelman

4 hours ago

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.

sillyfluke

3 hours ago

>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.

bondarchuk

3 hours ago

Uh sorry guys I phrased it weird I meant "complete absence of proof" more like.

chrisjj

2 hours ago

> People have identified basically everything coming from the network stack of an iPhone.

Scary. Shouldn't it be encrypted?

sdcfgy

4 hours ago

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.

grey-area

2 hours ago

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.

voakbasda

24 minutes ago

Given how much people tend to get distracted by their phones, I am surprised most workplaces do not have a phone ban.

sdcfgy

2 hours ago

Already do that in some situations.

grey-area

an hour ago

The watches have had a microphone for ages haven’t they?

Why does this feature change things? Unless it can’t be turned off?

sdcfgy

23 minutes ago

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.

chrisjj

2 hours ago

My device has no microphone. Promise.

How would you verify?

r3trohack3r

2 hours ago

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.

chrisjj

an hour ago

My device is listed model XYZ. Promise.

How would you verify?

carlm42

2 hours ago

The irony is that that would probably be Apple's policy with its own offices if a competitor came up with such a feature.

0xDEADBEEFCAFE

2 hours ago

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..

sdcfgy

2 hours ago

Got a shitty old Casio here. Does the job.

pelotron

an hour ago

Sounds like a mighty fine watch. Simple, cheap, fulfills requirements with no scope creep.

sdcfgy

28 minutes ago

Keeps time better than my friend's Rolex too :)

Krasnol

3 hours ago

No watches, no glasses and soon no implants....

algoth1

2 hours ago

Nice, no need for an LG TV anymore

gumby

4 hours ago

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.

malfist

3 hours ago

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

algoth1

2 hours ago

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

Ccecil

an hour ago

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.

abirch

4 hours ago

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.

voakbasda

2 minutes ago

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?

Krasnol

3 hours ago

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.

skinfaxi

3 hours ago

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.

commandlinefan

an hour ago

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.

Espressosaurus

4 hours ago

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?

bryanrasmussen

3 hours ago

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.

jsw97

3 hours ago

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.
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:

    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.

bryanrasmussen

an hour ago

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.

skinfaxi

2 hours ago

> 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?

whoamii

35 minutes ago

If the Walkman is recording all the time, then of course they would be a party.

bryanrasmussen

an hour ago

Apple is potentially a party because Apple processes and provides a recap of what was processed.

jsw97

3 minutes ago

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.

j16sdiz

4 hours ago

It is "not stored" "not recorded".

concinds

2 hours ago

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.

eightysixfour

20 minutes ago

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.

tyrabound

15 minutes ago

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.

jjtheblunt

9 minutes ago

> 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.

stblack

2 hours ago

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.

soapdog

3 hours ago

Hence why I wear an old pebble to this day. Smart where it matters but not a data siphoning device.

moepstar

4 hours ago

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…

khalic

4 hours ago

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”.

eshack94

27 minutes ago

Can this be disabled?

hncbw02z5a

4 hours ago

built a meeting bot once, forgot the consent chime, legal killed it same week

seethishat

2 hours ago

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.

throwfaraway4

2 hours ago

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?

stranded22

4 hours ago

I’m audhd - I LOVE this. It will be so helpful (I hope)

napolux

4 hours ago

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. *

dmd

3 hours ago

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.

napolux

2 hours ago

> Not everyone has the same needs.

True, but almost all of the people don't really need a smartwatch :)

dmd

an hour ago

One saved my aunt's life. But I suppose I didn't really need an aunt, right?

basch

3 hours ago

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.

lozenge

an hour ago

Garmin Pay? My Vivoactive lasts about 7-8 days with sleep tracking and phone notifications. 20 days if you disable phone connectivity.

0gs

3 hours ago

fwiw, the new pebble lasts a week on a charge and it is great. but agree most of the smart features are still useless.

rpdillon

2 hours ago

It's great except for the side button durability. I had to throw my latest Pebble out because of that.

outime

4 hours ago

>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.

troupo

4 hours ago

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

archerx

4 hours ago

Yea were they not paying attention during the Microsoft Recall debacle?

Kwpolska

2 hours ago

They hope they can get away with it, because their fanboys will defend them for anything.

zuhsetaqi

2 hours ago

Thanks to Hey Siri, your Apple Watch is always listening.

ksec

an hour ago

I lost count how many times my boss will just flat out lie. This will be a very useful feature.

xbar

2 hours ago

Um. Apple?

speedgoose

2 hours ago

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?

Barbing

an hour ago

Join Ernst & Young first?

https://help.apple.com/pdf/certifications/en_US/2025-Apple-P...

  “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.

chrisjj

2 hours ago

> Speakers are not identified

Apple thinks that's a benefit, apparently.

khalic

2 hours ago

It’s probably for legal reasons

chrisjj

an hour ago

None I know of.

Much more likely brand reputation management.

basisword

4 hours ago

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.