Local Is Not a Sufficient Privacy Boundary: Governing OS-Integrated On-Device AI

Computer Science > Cryptography and Security [Submitted on 8 Jun 2026] Local Is Not a Sufficient Privacy Boundary: Governing OS-Integrated On-Device AI Jonghyun Chung, Sanket Badhe As AI systems move into operating systems, privacy no longer turns only on whether a model runs locally. A local assistant may assemble email, calendar entries, files, screenshots, notifications, and app intents; retain embeddings or summaries; invoke tools; emit telemetry; or route difficult requests to cloud infrastructure. Local inference reduces some exposure, but it answers only one question: where computation occurs. It does not answer who may assemble context, what derived state persists, which actions are authorized, or how updates change the system's authority. We develop an OS-centered privacy framework for on-device AI that treats privacy as an institutional accountability problem rather than a deployment attribute. The framework specifies a threat model, a six-part privacy risk taxonomy, privacy-by-architecture controls, and a four-level audit rubric. We demonstrate the rubric through a documentation-bounded comparison of Apple Intelligence/Foundation Models, Android AICore/Gemini Nano, and Microsoft Recall. Meaningful privacy in on-device AI depends on constrained information flow, bounded authority, visible user control, and auditable governance across the operating-system lifecycle. Subjects: Cryptography and Security (cs.CR); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI) Cite as: arXiv:2606.10173 [cs.CR]   (or arXiv:2606.10173v1 [cs.CR] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2606.10173 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Jonghyun Chung [view email] [v1] Mon, 8 Jun 2026 21:07:11 UTC (27 KB) Access Paper: HTML (experimental) view license Current browse context: cs.CR < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-06 Change to browse by: cs cs.AI References & Citations NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)