I have an older smart watch and it's starting to get a little tired, I'll be replacing it with an actual watch that only tells the time and date, so sick of all smart things
this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2026
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Thanks Siri Recaps!
How does this not violate 2-party consent?
There is probably some technicality in that since it doesn’t record audio, but rather just keeps a transcription - that it might not fall afoul of two-party consent?
Even if it is only temporarily stored to RAM for processing, I struggle to see how that doesn't still count as "recording".
It probably wouldn’t meet the strict legal definition, as no copy (physical or digital) is left behind for any period of time - as RAM is volatile and its contents disappear on power cycle.
Or it probably would, they just have no plan to stop it unless they get sued and a judge forces them
Corporations are allowed to do whatever they want, whenever they want. There might be a few tiny consequences 10-20 years later that shaves a couple months of profit down, but that is just the cost of business and massive profits for the rest of the time.
Hope this helps!
Not every country or country subdivision has two party consent. Canada is a one party consent legislation.
I understand that. What about the places that do?
They can disable it based on geolocation, or like others said, put the onus on the user to know best.
I'm guessing they'll put the responsibility on the user to only activate it when it has the consent of people around it or something...
Won’t exist there
Remember when they used to say if you didn't pay for the product it was because you were the product? Now-a-days you get to pay to be the product.
Man, my work is going to ban apple watches so fast based on this.
Same. Which is hilarious because we're an Apple organization mostly.
How many times has Strava leaked secret military base coordinates?
Surveillance capitalism fucking sucks. Can we all go back to the 90's or early 2000's?
The worst thing about this is how ubiquitous Apple watches are. Now everybody who has one is going to have people suspecting them of being unwitting surveillance meat drones.
I won’t say it’s not* a privacy nightmare but doesn’t Apple devices process this whole thing on-device? I don’t find it fair to compare this with Meta anything (and only that).
You can't trust any corporation to keep your data safe and local. They lie about not sending it elsewhere, and even when they don't, all it takes is one security breech, which every company has all the damn time.
Ok, but prior to this, the listening thing was at least a separate device. Now it can be a watch or sun glasses or your tv...
Plus is doesn’t store the audio nor an infinite log. It just continuously stores the last 15 seconds to my understanding. Meaning, what was said and transcribed 30 seconds ago is no longer accessible.
I don’t give a fuck. Your stupid dweeb watch is just another antisocial surveillance device.
But add an always-listening AI assistant into the mix who's taking notes on your day-to-day, including your conversations with others who may not know they're being surveilled, and suddenly Apple's latest handy feature starts to look a lot creepier. Apple's other big new Audio Intelligence feature for watches is Live Rewind, which can produce a transcript of the last 15 seconds of audio on your watch face — whether a wake word was said, or not.
It isn't enough to be privacy conscious. Now the apyijg follows you anywhere you have contact with other people
You’ve been able to just record audio with a watch forever now I don’t see how this is significantly worse than that.
Because I can tell it to record what I want when I want, not let it listen all the time. This fucking thing is a shackle now.
That’s not new though, it also listens for Hey Siri all the time like all modern Apple devices have been doing for years. You can also still turn it off if it’s your own watch.