OpenAI, the US government and Persona built an identity surveillance machine
vmfunc.re

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360 points

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rzk

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4 hours ago

123 comments

pharos92 ・ 3 hours ago

It seems like at every technological step, we're sold the dream and delivered the meme. We always end up with the worst possible combination of players, ideas and outcomes; with the promise of what the said technology delivers in terms of additional freedom or free time never realised. How many more broken social contracts can society endure before it crumbles?

  • dlenski ・ 3 hours ago

    It's "socializing the losses and privatizing the gains"… but now alarmingly supercharged well beyond purely financial realms, and into really basic and fundamental matters of individual physical autonomy and liberty.

  • xg15 ・ 2 hours ago

    > How many more broken social contracts can society endure before it crumbles?

    Having any kind of agency in those things would be a start.

    If <FAANG bigcorp of your choice> announces with great fanfare "We're building this totally awesome new technology that will make everything better! And the best thing? You won't have to do anything, we will auto-update all your devices/accounts/etc with it for free! Trust us!", then whether you personally believe their enthusiastic predictions or not doesn't really matter a lot - you will get it anyway, unless you spend a lot of energy to deliberately avoid the new technology.

  • whynotmaybe ・ 3 hours ago

    Ever read 1984?

    Who wins at the end?

    • ramuel ・ 3 hours ago

      Winston, obviously. He left behind his free-thinking and became unwavering to Big Brother. Truly a winner

      • dylan604 ・ 3 hours ago

        Why, oh why, didn't I take the blue pill?

  • ctoth ・ an hour ago

    The story here is that a FedRAMP-authorized system had 53MB of Vite dev source maps exposed on a production government endpoint. That's not "sold the dream, delivered the meme," that's a specific auditable compliance failure. Meanwhile a fintech engineer explaining that this is all standard legally-mandated KYC infrastructure got flagged to death. The interesting question isn't whether technology betrays us, it's why US law requires this surveillance apparatus in the first place and why the security assessment apparently missed checking for /vite-dev/ on a government system.

    Also every technological step? Ever? Really? This wouldn't happen to be typed on a computer from a climate-controlled room on a nice global network or anything?

  • ferguess_k ・ 3 hours ago

    From my understanding, we are pretty close to a Dystopian world where all elites of a certain group collaborate to run a Super Leviathan. We still gotta choose our flavors, which may not be feasible in maybe 5-10 years when those leviathans clash into each other.

    • measurablefunc ・ 3 hours ago

      Goliath's Curse by Luke Kemp covers it pretty well I think.

      • ferguess_k ・ 3 hours ago

        Thanks for the recommendation.

    • dylan604 ・ 3 hours ago

      It's not like this is surprising, there have been plenty of sci-fi books/movies that have predicted this very thing. How many movies have the haves lived above ground/off planet, while the have nots have lived underground or stuck on a apocalyptic planet.

      This is just furthering the previous history. Currently, the lords have just been able to keep the serfs appeased to a longer extent. Every time in history or in sci-fi, the serfs reach a breaking point and rise up.

      • ferguess_k ・ 3 hours ago

        I don't think they are going to rise up this time. Maybe laying down flat is more realistic.

      • mistrial9 ・ 2 hours ago

        > Every time in history or in sci-fi, the serfs reach a breaking point and rise up.

        this is a completely "WEIRD" outlook.. more than half of humanity has no illusions about "proletarians" they do not even discuss it that way

        source: born and raised WEIRD

      • measurablefunc ・ 3 hours ago
        ・ 6 more

        This time is different. The global system is not going to fall apart like isolated kingdoms in the past.

        • dylan604 ・ 2 hours ago
          ・ 4 more

          You seem very confident. This seems to imply you feel the haves will know when to leave enough on the table for the have nots to still feel like they are a part of the haves. I'm not so confident in that.

          • atmavatar ・ an hour ago
            ・ 2 more

            Far more likely is that we head back to a feudal era where data mining tech is used to identify and eliminate potential rabble-rousers. Once enough production is automated, all remaining have-nots are exterminated.

            • neuralRiot ・ 7 minutes ago

              The weak link is that for “the haves” to have, the “have -nots” are needed. To have or to not is just a comparison, a millionaire needs the poor to be rich and to feel special otherwise when everyone is special nobody is.

          • measurablefunc ・ 2 hours ago

            People in technologically advanced societies have more than enough & the people who are not as advanced can not do anything that will have any effect on the people who own the fighter jets, missiles, robot factories, & "internet" satellites. The current system has no historical precedent. It is very close to an almost perfect panopticon w/ an associated media & police apparatus to keep everyone docile & complacent. Like I said, this time is different.

        • neuralRiot ・ 12 minutes ago

          “ Whatever it is you’re seeking won’t come in the form you’re expecting – Haruki Murakami”

  • vpShane ・ 41 minutes ago

    Birds of a flock crap on everybody together.

    > How many more broken social contracts can society endure before it crumbles?

    I wouldn't call this much of a society if people's eyes are open.

    What's that song name, they don't care about us?

  • nehal3m ・ 3 hours ago

    All these memes are burning through our natural reserves at an ever increasing rate so it will crumble when the bread baskets fail anyway.

  • storus ・ an hour ago

    I think that's a natural outcome of a model where sociopaths climb to the top, with a layer of sycophants beneath them that shield normal workers from perceiving the amount of depravity going on at the top which would make them unable to continue and tank the business. AI might remove the reliance on regular folks and give sociopaths direct execution of all ideas they have without any moral opposition, and that would explain a lot of the rush for AI everywhere we see nowadays.

cloverich ・ 3 hours ago

Going to copy paste my comment from today's other thread[3] that linked to this:

Note also there's a direct response from Persona's security team here[1], and a lot of back and forth from Rick on Twitter[2].

[1]: https://withpersona.com/blog/post-incident-review-source-map...

[2]: https://x.com/Persona_IDV/status/2025048195773198385?s=20

[3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47136036

  • aeldidi ・ 3 hours ago

    The withpersona.com URL seems to return 404.

  • kelvinjps10 ・ 2 hours ago

    They did good damage control with that post

sebastianconcpt ・ 3 hours ago

Quite some time ago I said and now repeat:

Convenience is to humans, what bulb lights at night are to bugs.

  • esafak ・ 3 hours ago

    No pain, no gain.

  • themafia ・ 42 minutes ago

    Ridiculous.

    Stand in a hospital and say that credibly. I recommend the maternity ward.

    Our consumer markets are a wreck. We have no federal watch dog exercising any authority. We have unchecked intelligence agencies actively trying to enslave the world. Our desire for convenience is not the problem, the people taking advantage of it are.

    • moffkalast ・ 23 minutes ago

      Why a hospital? There's very little convenience at play when it's a life and death situation.

      It is what drives the market quite a bit at least. It's why we've produced over 2 billion cars and use them every day to pollute our own air so we don't have to walk two blocks. Most home appliances are convenience personified, the dishwasher, the microwave, the clothes dryer. It's why we have supply chains up the wazoo to bring products from all corners of the globe to everyone's nearby supermarket, a large amount of it getting thrown away when it's expired unsold. We fly across countries for something as pointless as a business meeting. Hell people now even order a taxi for their food, so they don't have to go out to get it.

      Modern life is like at least 60% wastefulness in the name of convenience. Of course people with the option to do so will exploit the one thing that's easily exploitable, that's like water flowing downhill.

dylan604 ・ 2 hours ago

"what is Fivecast ONYX? an AI-powered surveillance platform purchased by ICE for $4.2 million and CBP for additional license costs. according to Fivecast’s own documentation and EFF’s reporting, they do automated collection of multimedia data from social media and dark web, build “digital footprints” from biographical data, tracks shifts in sentiment and emotion, assigns risk scores, searches across 300+ platforms and 28+ billion data points, identifies people with “violent tendencies”"

Glad to know that my tinfoil hat wasn't too tight when social media came to be and this obvious use was predicted. How quickly will not having social media accounts become a crime?

  • varenc ・ 2 hours ago

    According to Persona's damage control article[0], the subdomain had "onyx" in its name because that's the internal code name for the project, and it's named after the pokémon Onyx. No connection to Fivecast ONYX.

    [0] https://withpersona.com/blog/post-incident-review-source-map...

    • crimsoneer ・ 2 hours ago

      I don't really understand why ICE would have a Persona OPenAI connection...?

      • pseudosaid ・ an hour ago

        Really? Sounds like they are a customer.

  • a_victorp ・ 2 hours ago

    It's already frowned upon when crossing the border

  • tamimio ・ 2 hours ago

    We need a list of these 300+ platforms

MattDaEskimo ・ 3 hours ago

What can those do from a separate country, who unfortunately had their identity verified through Persona (LinkedIn in my case).

  • shimman ・ 3 hours ago

    Organize in your country and advocate for data deletion jubilees, organize in your country to champion new taxes against US digital services, organize in your country to advocate for homegrown solutions over US tech.

    If you aren't actively organizing you aren't going to accomplish anything.

    Remember that people power trumps monetary power, but you have to commit for people power to work.

    • giancarlostoro ・ 3 hours ago

      > advocate for homegrown solutions over US tech.

      Some sweet irony about this btw.

      • shimman ・ 2 hours ago
        ・ 2 more

        Why? Every country on Earth is capable of creating and maintaining software. There is nothing unique about America or Silicon Valley (outside of the massive amounts of corporate welfare), devs can be found anywhere and who better to write software for local citizens than the local citizens themselves?

        We know how useful open source software is, there's no reason why this can't be replicated across the planet.

        • giancarlostoro ・ an hour ago

          Not because they cannot do it, but because why they're doing it, which in turn becomes what they're doing. America is being perceived as isolationist, so countries solve that by becoming isolationist about what software they use, whether its open source or not is kind of irrelevant, though in several cases the software will primarily be focused on the countries own language.

          The better alternative in my eyes is to contribute to existing open source, and only if the US becomes hostile against this, fork said code and move on.

  • drac89 ・ 3 hours ago

    From the blog post I've recently read; https://thelocalstack.eu/posts/linkedin-identity-verificatio...

    1. Request your data. Email idv-privacy@withpersona.com or privacy@withpersona.com. Under GDPR, they have 30 days to respond.

    2. Request deletion. The verification is done. LinkedIn already has the result. There is no reason for Persona to keep your passport scan and facial geometry on their servers. Ask them to delete it.

    3. Contact their DPO. dpo@withpersona.com — that’s their Data Protection Officer. If you want to object to them using your documents as AI training data under “legitimate interests,” this is where you do it.

    4. Think twice before verifying. That blue badge might not be worth what you’re trading for it. A checkmark is cosmetic. Biometric data is forever.

4midori ・ 3 hours ago

In response to a data request, Persona says:

Hi there,

Thank you for reaching out to Persona.

Please note that Persona primarily operates as a "service provider" or "processor" for its customers. We act as a "business" or "controller" only for specific services, such as identity verification for LinkedIn, FoxCorp, and Reusable Persona. To learn more about how Persona manages your personal data, please refer to our privacy notices, which can be accessed through the following link: https://withpersona.com/legal/privacy-notices

If you wish to exercise your privacy rights related to services where Persona is a "service provider" or "processor," please contact the entity using our service, as they are the "controller" of the data. We will assist the relevant customer to fulfill your data subject rights, but we do not handle such requests directly on their behalf.

For any privacy rights request related to services where Persona acts as a "business" or "controller," including identity verification for LinkedIn, FoxCorp, Reusable Persona, and personal data related to our sales, marketing activities, or website browsing on withpersona.com, please use our Data Subject Request (DSAR) available at the following link: https://withpersona.com/dsar

For all other inquiries, we will respond as soon as possible.

###

TL;DR we're not responsible, go talk to LinkedIn.

  • plagiarist ・ 2 hours ago

    This is the same complete bullshit trying to remove oneself from political donation emails. "Oh, okay, we will remove you from that one." Days later it's a "different campaign." Sometimes it's the exact same people from weeks ago who have just renamed their campaign and started sending again.

    We need far stronger laws for all of it, which will never happen because the rot and corruption has fully metastasized.

Havoc ・ an hour ago

Wonder how many lists I'm on for the unholy sin of saying the glorious american leader is a moron

  • oth001 ・ an hour ago

    Or for saying Israel shouldn't be committing a genocide.

edverma2 ・ 3 hours ago

This is a hilarious personal website! Love it. Even better that it's paired with quality content.

  • spacebacon ・ an hour ago

    I felt alive again as I used my physical volume button down to focus on the text.

Ancalagon ・ 3 hours ago

Why do so many engineers willingly build things bad for society?

  • mikestew ・ 3 hours ago

    Because it generally pays well. I'd wax philosophically, but you can come to your own conclusions from that little nugget.

    • popalchemist ・ 2 hours ago

      Enough said. Since the "death of God" (per Nietzsche - the collapse of the metaphysics underpinning our morals and therefore cultural norms and behaviors) the modus operandi has been the utilitarian "get what's yours."

      Reprehensible.

      Additionally, people are typically only "gifted" on one domain -- if one's gifted enough in the domain of intellect to become a SWE, they're typically lacking elsewhere, whether that be in moral scruples or the ability to discern social things such as when they're working for sociopaths.

      • Ancalagon ・ 2 hours ago

        You'd think empathy would just be enough, its very sad.

  • konart ・ 3 hours ago

    Because they do not believe it is bad?

    Because they believe that it's going to be build anyone by someone else?

    Because they are not entirely aware of what they are building?

    • kaashif ・ 3 hours ago

      Money can be exchanged for services.

      Hope this helps.

    • Ancalagon ・ 3 hours ago

      All these bright engineers can’t figure out the bigger picture of what they’re building?

      “Hey boss man, why does this database ‘tracked_individuals’ have columns for license plate numbers, home addresses, and political affiliations?”

      Give me a break

    • krapp ・ 3 hours ago

      Because they're paid enough to retire at 30.

  • biophysboy ・ 2 hours ago

    Many tech execs operate under the thesis that china & the democratic party are existential threats that warrant a surveillance/military/police ramp up. Meanwhile, many tech employees are credulous and frequently adopt self-serving geopolitical narratives. The current macro trends don't help (huge defense budgets, bad labor market power, China is in fact more powerful)

    Edit:forgot the most obvious... money

  • FrustratedMonky ・ 3 hours ago

    Evil pays more.

    A common theme in a lot of movies, books, et..

  • bombdailer ・ 3 hours ago

    Because the highest values of our society are non-values.

  • GorbachevyChase ・ 3 hours ago

    The tribe won’t eat their own… probably.

  • ej88 ・ 2 hours ago

    surprised nobody responded with the most straightforward, occams razor explanation

    they think what they're doing is actually good for society

    not everyone is in the hackerspace libertarian / socialist sphere

    i used to work for a place that used persona despite it adding extra friction to signups (literally resulting in less paying customers to the dismay of PMs) because it was worth it to combat fraud. theres a tradeoff in everything

  • bigyabai ・ 3 hours ago

    "Oh boy! I've always wanted to work at [microsoft, apple, google, etc.]!"

    • mikestew ・ 3 hours ago

      Those aren't the companies OP is necessarily talking about. "I've always wanted to work at Persona!", said no one, ever.

      • bigyabai ・ 18 minutes ago

        All of them are complicit. You only need ~50 greedy sociopaths to work at Persona, and 10,000 dumb-as-rocks engineers hyped to work at Microsoft/OpenAI and "stop the bad guys" or whatever the boogeyman du-jour is.

        We saw it with Bitlocker, we saw it with Client Side Scanning, we see it with Salt Typhoon. Most people that work on weaponized surveillance systems are entirely apathetic, or see themselves as righteous. Even when the system is known to be bugged, obviously flawed, or outright controlled by a foreign adversary.

  • Nezteb ・ 3 hours ago

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_apples

    Immoral boot-licking human engineers are indistinguishable from LLMs.

    • Ancalagon ・ 2 hours ago

      What's crazy is I know engineers like this in real life - and they're good engineers! So I know they do exist, but their existence to serve their company or CEO no matter what is completely foreign to me. Like, you're smart enough to understand that large codebase and generally function as a member of society, but you've completely given up your higher level decision making for someone or something that would throw you away in an instant.

gslepak ・ 2 hours ago

Does someone have a version that doesn't force you to listen to unwanted music?

  • Havoc ・ 2 hours ago

    In FF you can click on a tab on left side to mute it not sure other browsers

int32_64 ・ 3 hours ago

Based on the Anthropic distillation news yesterday I wonder if the AI companies are going to get much tighter with KYC.

  • disgruntledphd2 ・ 2 hours ago

    I get the KYC concerns for API access, but I'm sortof baffled at why they'd need all of the AML stuff, given that they're not payment processors/financial institutions.

    Or does Persona provide that by default? Don't know much about their service...

cedws ・ 2 hours ago

Governments in Europe should be seriously scrutinising this with the background conversation of departing American tech going on. Discord users globally were being coerced into handing over their ID to this American surveillance tech. Are we just going to let this go on?

yoyohello13 ・ 3 hours ago

This website really is incredible!

Kiboneu ・ an hour ago

> OpenAI’s disclosures reference biometric data stored “up to a year.” the source > code shows face list retention capped at 3 years. government IDs retained > “permanently” per Persona’s practices. which is it?

I keep saying this. This is the playbook -- everything is moving to standardize Sam Altman's biometric authentication cryptocurrency company to use internet services. This has been a slow moving strategy for /years/ and every new step over that period only get closer, not further from this goal.

standardly ・ an hour ago

Author was doing such a good write-up, until I saw repeated AI syntax "its not x, but y" and "a is b. b is c. and, c is the final thing in this series of short, punchy sentences". Really tired of this. Why is it so hard to just write naturally? Maybe I'm just easily triggered

tamimio ・ 2 hours ago

> 0x18 - betrayal

This is the most important section, as the above ones any privacy-conscious person would assume most anyway. I did mention before that we need an open-source platform that tracks the people who work and build such systems. Those are the enablers who have no morals or ethics - a greedy corporation is always greedy, but when the average employee is willing to work full time on building such systems, they need to be exposed publicly, just as they are working relentlessly on violating private people's privacy. It isn't about public humiliation; it's about basic human decency and maintaining a minimum ethical code to abide by. These individuals shouldn't be hired or dealt with, not even a simple connection on LinkedIn.

These individuals are dangerous. They are like rats among us and should be exposed, and I bet some of them are reading this as well.

baddash ・ 2 hours ago

thank god there's an annoying fucking cat in the way of what i'm trying to read

  • noutella ・ 2 hours ago

    Move your mouse and the cat will follow

    • righthand ・ 2 hours ago

      On mobile the cat sits in the middle of the screen and does not respond to touch input. The author has been told about the distracting elements and refused to acknowledge it.

      • testycool ・ 36 minutes ago

        If I tap somewhere else the cat goes there. I like the website, even though some design choices don't follow UX best practices.

tr_alts ・ 3 hours ago

The right wing went full censorship and surveillance after the Charlie Kirk assassination. It is probably not a coincidence that they targeted Discord first, because the suspect was in a Discord group.

They promised freedom of speech and liberty and this is what we get.

  • exceptione ・ 2 hours ago 

      > The right wing went full censorship and surveillance after the Charlie Kirk assassination.
    No, earlier. US tech is mostly surveillance tech, with Thiel being sponsor and broker for authoritarian right. The doge operation started around day 1, and was a breach into the government to steal data that was yet out of reach for certain plotters.
  • hactually ・ 3 hours ago

    nothing to do with left or right. the UK is left and has the most Orwellian surveillance state outside of China

  • jcranmer ・ 2 hours ago

    The right wing went full censorship and surveillance long before the Charlie Kirk assassination. Anyone who believed that the right wing (or the left wing, for that matter; let's not pretend that censorious dipshittery is not bipartisan) was honestly promising freedom of speech as opposed to merely freedom of speech they like and censorship of speech they don't like was at best willfully blinding themselves to the actual actions of politicians.

    • exceptione ・ an hour ago 

        > long before the Charlie Kirk assassination.
      True. The free speech narratives are mere tools against opposition by promoting the most childish and stupidly rigid interpretations thereof, not something they really believe in. The whole conservative project is doomed from the start as it has to confront science and progress like the emancipation by women, lgbt people and certain ethnicities.

        > or the left wing, for that matter;
      Both sides is uncalled for. Far left and the horse shoe, sure, but a) far left is very fringe, and b) lets not equate them with a well funded actual insurrection of oligarch and white nationalists with a paramilitary.
      • sfink ・ an hour ago

        > > or the left wing, for that matter; > Both sides is uncalled for. Far left and the horse shoe, sure

        How so? Leftist censorship became quite popular on college campuses. The ACLU supported that, and got cold feet about promoting free expression more generally when it involves organizations or causes it doesn't like.

        I'm a lefty, but I absolutely believe that both the left and right are deep in the "ends justify the means" weeds with respect to censorship and free expression. I blame partisanship. People used to have respect for someone taking a principled stand that didn't necessarily align with their overall political position. Now, that's just seen as a weak maneuver in the all-important "my team vs your team" culture war.

        > The whole conservative project is doomed from the start as it has to confront science and progress like the emancipation by women, lgbt people and certain ethnicities.

        I have no idea what you're talking about. There is no scientific or natural law that says that every human should have equal rights. You can totally make a stable society that discriminates on color of skin or possession of certain documents or account balance. It's been done many times. Science does not tell you whether votes should be extended all the way to ducks but not chickens, nor whether unauthorized presence in a country should enable arbitrary search and seizure. Plus, "conservative" covers a lot of ground and someone can legitimately be extremely conservative and completely opposed to (eg) white nationalism at the same time.

        Sure, conservatism is always going to drag its heels to recognize and accommodate the sorts of progress in science and other understanding that I'm guessing you're thinking of, but progressives can just as easily go too far too fast and be blind to the tradeoffs and principles involved. The "conservative project" can't be doomed; it will always be a different point on a continuum from the "progressive project", and we'll always be able to argue over where the right point is.

        Well, at least until we're all dead or so infantilized by our technology that we stop even asking the questions.

tinfoilhatter ・ 3 hours ago

[flagged]

  • akramachamarei ・ 2 hours ago

    I love it when names of things match their characteristics.

    • tinfoilhatter ・ 2 hours ago

      Except everything I said was factual, and nothing was conspiratorial. If you disagree, please point out where I was factually incorrect. Otherwise, you should probably change your username to ignoramus or denierofreality or something similar. Unless you want to be viewed as a hypocrite that is.

ms170888 ・ 3 hours ago

[flagged]

  • selfhoster11 ・ 3 hours ago

    No, the problem absolutely is identity verification. No KYC should be needed for any kind of online API service, period.

  • rd ・ 3 hours ago

    The amount of green accounts that are obvious LLM spam has increased what seems to be 10x in the past couple of months. What's going on?

    • SkyeCA ・ 2 hours ago

      > What's going on?

      People are doing their best to turn Dead Internet Theory into Dead Internet Reality.

    • ssk42 ・ 3 hours ago

      ClawdBots can now more easily interact with the Internet than regular agents, so you wind up with Moltbook leaking

    • sealeck ・ 3 hours ago

      Why is this LLM spam?

      • rd ・ 3 hours ago

        Just check comment history, each comment follows the exact same structure

RiverCrochet ・ 3 hours ago

Is this the mark of the beast?

  • throw4847285 ・ 2 hours ago

    Well if you will turn your attention to my Straussian reading of the most popular comic books and anime, you may find that...

  • outside1234 ・ 3 hours ago

    No, the mark of the beast is everyone in the Epstein files

    • johnnyanmac ・ 3 hours ago

      So, less a mark and more an abyss to stare into?

    • tinfoilhatter ・ 3 hours ago

      What do the people in the Epstein files have to do with a mark that people need to receive in order to participate in society? I'm confused.

FarmerPotato ・ 3 hours ago

Is this whole unreadable article just the output from an AI prompt describing a techno-thriller?

  • random3 ・ 2 hours ago

    likely not. Being able to read and understand is a matter of skill though. There are many technical terms there that may make it unreadable for non-technical audience. But you can solve that by having an AI explain it to you.