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Posted by rzk 5 hours ago

OpenAI, the US government and Persona built an identity surveillance machine(vmfunc.re)
Related ongoing thread: Discord cuts ties with identity verification software, Persona - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47136036 - Feb 2026 (282 comments)
371 points | 117 commentspage 2
cedws 4 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?
frm88 2 hours ago|
Unfortunately Persona already has a lot of contracts in the EU and is about to get more https://fintecbuzz.com/persona-to-launch-a-new-suite-of-solu...
MattDaEskimo 5 hours ago||
What can those do from a separate country, who unfortunately had their identity verified through Persona (LinkedIn in my case).
shimman 5 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 5 hours ago||
> advocate for homegrown solutions over US tech.

Some sweet irony about this btw.

shimman 4 hours ago||
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 3 hours 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 5 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.

hbcondo714 5 hours ago||
As heavily discussed here 3 days ago (Persona is the same company LinkedIn uses for their ID verification process):

I verified my LinkedIn identity. Here's what I handed over

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47098245

1.4K+ points, 490+ comments

yoyohello13 4 hours ago||
This website really is incredible!
ArchieScrivener 5 hours ago||
Why the myspace music?
ericd 1 hour ago||
Is that… Chrono Trigger?
OneDeuxTriSeiGo 5 hours ago|||
whimsy
Kiboneu 2 hours 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.

time2buybitcoin 2 hours ago||
[dead]
standardly 2 hours 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
firegodjr 1 hour ago|
That was writing naturally until AI stole it from us.
sebastianconcpt 5 hours ago||
Quite some time ago I said and now repeat:

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

esafak 5 hours ago||
No pain, no gain.
themafia 2 hours 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 2 hours 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.

tamimio 4 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 4 hours ago|
thank god there's an annoying fucking cat in the way of what i'm trying to read
noutella 4 hours ago|
Move your mouse and the cat will follow
righthand 3 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 2 hours 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.
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