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| | |.---.-..----.| |--..-----..----. | | |.-----..--.--.--..-----.
| || _ || __|| < | -__|| _| | || -__|| | | ||__ --|
|___|___||___._||____||__|__||_____||__| |__|____||_____||________||_____|
on Gopher (inofficial)
HTML Visit Hacker News on the Web
COMMENT PAGE FOR:
HTML OpenAI, the US government and Persona built an identity surveillance machine
kevincloudsec wrote 3 hours 43 min ago:
calling data sovereignty laws a cybersecurity risk in the same week
that Persona had 2500 files exposed on a government endpoint is an
interesting choice of timing.
emsign wrote 15 hours 4 min ago:
Websites with sound are a big no-no.
5o1ecist wrote 17 hours 20 min ago:
I ask for forgiveness, but ...
The 90s called, THE CAT HUNTS THE MOUSE! :D :D
rambojohnson wrote 18 hours 10 min ago:
"We werenât hacked" is doing PR triage for "we exposed sensitive
internal implementation details." Spy company semantics are always
incredible. The house didnât burn down, it just leaked gas.
LiamPowell wrote 19 hours 12 min ago:
Another downvoted comment asks if this is all LLM output. While I don't
think all of it is, chunks of it have LLM smells so I wanted to point
those out as the author or other readers may find it useful:
The ASCII flowcharts all contain jagged vertical lines. This is the
biggest indicator of LLM output as no human would ever produce that.
You can simply see with your eyes that it's wrong if you even glance at
it.
> thereâs no way for us to prove that they donât have access to all
of that data anyway. we can only assume that they donât have access
to all of that data. but if you want my two cents, they probably do.
This doesn't quite read as LLM output but it makes the whole article
look like a conspiracy theory.
> after trying to write a few exploits, vmfunc decided to browse their
infra on shodan. it all started with a Shodan search. a single IP.
34.49.93.177 sitting on Google Cloud in Kansas City. one open port. one
SSL certificate. two hostnames that tell a story nobody was supposed to
read:
> and the company that runs all of this is the same one that takes your
passport photo when you sign up for ChatGPT. same codebase. same
platform. different deployment. same facial recognition. same screening
algorithms. same data model.
> and as always, the information wants to be free. we didnât break
anything. we didnât bypass anything. we queried URLs, pressed
buttons, and read what came back. if thatâs enough to expose the
architecture of a global surveillance platform⦠maybe the problem
isnât us.
These all absolutely stink of LLM writing patterns.
Ms-J wrote 19 hours 53 min ago:
Any time you "verify" your identity you are giving it to scum bags such
as this.
Your biographic data will leak to every hacker and every government
world wide.
tiffanyh wrote 21 hours 5 min ago:
Isnât this just normal KYC (for account opening).
What am I missing?
HTML [1]: https://withpersona.com/customers/openai
deaux wrote 14 hours 32 min ago:
There's nothing normal about it.
Kiboneu wrote 23 hours 47 min ago:
> OpenAIâs disclosures reference biometric data stored âup to a
year.â the source > code shows face list retention capped at 3 years.
government IDs retained
> âpermanentlyâ per Personaâs 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 wrote 23 hours 48 min 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 wrote 22 hours 39 min ago:
That was writing naturally until AI stole it from us.
standardly wrote 1 hour 28 min ago:
Maybe I overestimated how much was used here. I guess I'm so burned
out by seeing it everywhere else, it's becoming hard to tell what's
what.
I understand AI is trained on human output but that doesn't mean we
shouldn't be able to distinguish between the two. I've seen blogs
where this particular syntax "That's not x - it's actually y" is
repeated 10+ times. That's not normal human writing. Admit I picked
a bad example here, just read 5 AI articles in a row before this
one.
Havoc wrote 1 day ago:
Wonder how many lists I'm on for the unholy sin of saying the glorious
american leader is a moron
oth001 wrote 23 hours 51 min ago:
Or for saying Israel shouldn't be committing a genocide.
tinfoilhatter wrote 15 hours 8 min ago:
Or for noticing that Discord, Roblox, OpenAI, Anthropic, Persona,
and Palantir all have Zionist Israeli founders / co-founders / CEOs
/ funding. Or that 98% of US congress members received donations
from AIPAC or that the US president is a staunch Zionist /
supporter of Israel.
In before I get downvoted and flagged for speaking the truth and
noticing patterns.
trinsic2 wrote 5 hours 27 min ago:
You can see it in each presidential address. The flag is right
there along with our own.
gslepak wrote 1 day ago:
Does someone have a version that doesn't force you to listen to
unwanted music?
ceroxylon wrote 20 hours 21 min ago:
There is a play/pause button in the lower right corner.
gslepak wrote 19 hours 40 min ago:
Not on mobile...
Havoc wrote 1 day ago:
In FF you can click on a tab on left side to mute it not sure other
browsers
tamimio wrote 1 day 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.
cedws wrote 1 day 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?
5o1ecist wrote 17 hours 23 min ago:
Do you believe that the politicians, on the other side of the ocean,
aren't getting paid by the same cheese pizza eaters?
thephyber wrote 17 hours 56 min ago:
You act like the governments of Europe werenât the reason Discord
decided they needed to get government issued identity information
from European usersâ¦
teyopi wrote 19 hours 41 min ago:
NSA spied on European leaders[1] and we did nothing.
So yes, nothing happens.
HTML [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/31/denmark-helped...
frm88 wrote 23 hours 26 min ago:
Unfortunately Persona already has a lot of contracts in the EU and is
about to get more
HTML [1]: https://fintecbuzz.com/persona-to-launch-a-new-suite-of-solu...
baddash wrote 1 day ago:
thank god there's an annoying fucking cat in the way of what i'm trying
to read
trinsic2 wrote 20 hours 31 min ago:
Thank god for noscript. Did see or hear any of that and dumped the
text-only version of the article and HN discussion right to my local
hard drive for off-line reading.
noutella wrote 1 day ago:
Move your mouse and the cat will follow
righthand wrote 1 day 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 wrote 23 hours 35 min 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.
righthand wrote 16 hours 57 min ago:
That has changed in the last couple days.
dylan604 wrote 1 day 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 Fivecastâs own documentation and EFFâs reporting, they do
automated collection of multimedia data from social media and dark web,
build âdigital footprintsâ from biographical data, tracks shifts in
sentiment and emotion, assigns risk scores, searches across 300+
platforms and 28+ billion data points, identifies people with
âviolent tendenciesâ"
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?
raxxorraxor wrote 12 hours 35 min ago:
I am not that old and I remember when people warned other to put too
much info on social media. You can even identify people through a few
sentences and some people have basically a complete life encyclopedia
about themselves online. Sure, those are usually not the most
influential for political developments besides being called
influencers.
FrasiertheLion wrote 3 hours 28 min ago:
Recent paper by Nicholas Carlinini and others really showcases how
little it takes to deanonymize users across platforms with LLMs:
HTML [1]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.16800
jcgrillo wrote 20 hours 50 min ago:
Not a crime, necessarily, just a hefty debit against your social
credit score.
King-Aaron wrote 18 hours 24 min ago:
On a macro scale, in Australia if you don't have a paid private
health policy, you get slugged with additional tax come tax time.
The same could happen here - "oh, you don't have social media? Well
the state needs more tax from you to pay for your additional state
surveillance"
jcgrillo wrote 13 hours 43 min ago:
Could it though? I have lived in rural areas and urban areas of
the US. This speaks more to the rural areas than the urban, but
only marginally--Americans like their firearms, they're
suspicious of The Government, and they don't much care for the
tax man. And by and large they like to be left the fuck alone. If
the revenuers show up demanding too much we have a rich and
storied history of mistreating them.
nixon_why69 wrote 10 hours 28 min ago:
How's that working out right now?
lobsterthief wrote 9 hours 52 min ago:
Yeah, turns out Americans (rural or not) prefer creature
comforts like Amazon and Netflix over exercising their 2A
rights. All talk.
Source: American observing whatâs going on right now.
cluckindan wrote 7 hours 58 min ago:
82% of US households have an Amazon Prime subscription
while only 30% own a gun.
ok_dad wrote 19 hours 41 min ago:
Or a precursor to minority report precrime
jcgrillo wrote 13 hours 3 min ago:
It's an interesting conundrum.. I've always viewed "the law" as
something that doesn't really materialize until you're arrested,
arraigned, tried, and sentenced. So "breaking" the law and
"getting away with it" isn't actually "illegal" it's just...
normal. The law only matters if some filthy rat narc catches you
and summons the pigs. Not sure how any of that adjusts in this
scenario, really.
fooker wrote 21 hours 6 min ago:
> How quickly will not having social media accounts become a crime?
Ah, it already is. Just being trialed against people with less rights
and no voting power.
Since the last several months, your US visa will be rejected if you
do not submit public social media profiles.
If you think the government is spending a hundred billions on this
category of tech for vetting a few thousand people, you are a prime
candidate to buy a bridge that I can sell you for a discount.
seanhunter wrote 4 hours 52 min ago:
> Since the last several months, your US visa will be rejected if
you do not submit public social media profiles.
I donât think this is true. You can get a visa just fine if you
donât have social media profiles. Source: me. I donât have
facebook, insta, twitter etc and travel to the US just fine. When I
filled in the form I left those empty.
What I think you canât do is get a visa if you have social media
profiles and choose not to disclose them or you post things or have
friends/links on your social media that cbp considers elevates your
risk etc.
fooker wrote 54 min ago:
Leaving it empty is getting visas rejected nowadays.
UntappedShelf21 wrote 19 hours 39 min ago:
I got into the USA in September last year. On my esta I put a
private instagram account I begrudgingly made to talk to some
friends, and my LinkedIn. I guess thatâs enough data?
Barbing wrote 17 hours 59 min ago:
They swiped through the photo gallery on your phone, right?
(Standard for years from what I know based on Latin America to
USA)
galangalalgol wrote 19 hours 57 min ago:
Can I just ask gpt to ask me questions to create my profile
directly? I can't be bothered with any social media. Whatever it is
supposed to addict me with is missing, I just find it all very
boring.
tamimio wrote 1 day ago:
We need a list of these 300+ platforms
morkalork wrote 21 hours 43 min ago:
I'm 99% sure this is one of them. I thought 404media posted a
leaked list of the platforms once but I can't find it. Search is
dead (this is a general statement)
pesus wrote 15 hours 51 min ago:
It's safe to assume any publicly accessible website is one of
them or will be in the near future.
a_victorp wrote 1 day ago:
It's already frowned upon when crossing the border
antonvs wrote 21 hours 24 min ago:
Finally, a use for my LinkedIn account. In fact I think I might
start posting AI slop to it.
varenc wrote 1 day 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]
HTML [1]: https://withpersona.com/blog/post-incident-review-source-map...
m4rtink wrote 8 hours 50 min ago:
I am not sure summoning Nintendo due to trademark infringement will
help with damage control. ;-)
tremon wrote 1 hour 8 min ago:
Naming a fantasy creature after a common gemstone should make it
non-trademarkable anyway, but I'd love to see Nintendo tie up the
US government in court for years.
crimsoneer wrote 1 day ago:
I don't really understand why ICE would have a Persona OPenAI
connection...?
pseudosaid wrote 1 day ago:
Really? Sounds like they are a customer.
yoyohello13 wrote 1 day ago:
This website really is incredible!
jcgrillo wrote 17 hours 16 min ago:
work of art
int32_64 wrote 1 day ago:
Based on the Anthropic distillation news yesterday I wonder if the AI
companies are going to get much tighter with KYC.
disgruntledphd2 wrote 1 day 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...
edverma2 wrote 1 day ago:
This is a hilarious personal website! Love it. Even better that it's
paired with quality content.
emsign wrote 15 hours 2 min ago:
I don't like it playing sound, I can't read the blog post in the
metro. In fact I will direct my attention to the next thing and not
remember reading this later.
pamcake wrote 8 hours 36 min ago:
If you browse random news with autoplay audio in browser enabled,
that's on you.
prinny_ wrote 6 hours 57 min ago:
I have "default for all websites: block audio" in my firefox
settings and that site still played music.
nanobuilds wrote 17 hours 36 min ago:
Same. Some good music too.
mock-possum wrote 17 hours 48 min ago:
Not so cute when thereâs auto play audio and no controls to stop it
on mobile
jcgrillo wrote 17 hours 32 min ago:
I like it. It's like wandering into someone else's house. Their
stereo is playing, they're telling you some interesting story. It's
their party, I'm just a guest. It reminds me of how the web used to
feel.
emsign wrote 15 hours 1 min ago:
The passengers next to me hate the website. And I can't blame
them, I would too.
jcgrillo wrote 13 hours 49 min ago:
If you don't like the party.. just leave. You're not being
detained.
emsign wrote 2 hours 44 min ago:
Thanks for stating the obvious.
spacebacon wrote 1 day ago:
I felt alive again as I used my physical volume button down to focus
on the text.
dang wrote 1 day ago:
Comments moved to [1] .
HTML [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47140632
tr_alts wrote 1 day 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.
platevoltage wrote 14 hours 49 min ago:
I mean, they got louder about it after Charlie Kirk, but they've been
full censorship forever.
exceptione wrote 1 day 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.
jcranmer wrote 1 day 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 wrote 1 day 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 wrote 23 hours 47 min 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.
hactually wrote 1 day ago:
nothing to do with left or right. the UK is left and has the most
Orwellian surveillance state outside of China
platevoltage wrote 14 hours 48 min ago:
The current Labour Party is NOT Left by any definition.
raincole wrote 1 day ago:
[1] Persona's side of the story.
HTML [1]: https://withpersona.com/customers/openai
PostOnce wrote 17 hours 22 min ago:
Their side of the story is that they want to flag people as "too
risky to be allowed to use AI"?
There's a problem here, right? Who else might want to flag you and
lock you out of shit? Is this the new normal?
Will they flag Republicans / Democrats / Catholics / Buddhists /
People Of Any Particular Skintone / People with Blue Shoes Who Are
Exactly 5'9 / ????
The corporations are out of control. We should bring them to heel.
We should also resist and refuse to comply with these totally
arbitrary requests we don't have to comply with.
4midori wrote 1 day 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: [1] 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: [2] For all other inquiries, we will respond as soon as possible.
###
TL;DR we're not responsible, go talk to LinkedIn.
HTML [1]: https://withpersona.com/legal/privacy-notices
HTML [2]: https://withpersona.com/dsar
mistrial9 wrote 21 hours 17 min ago:
That does not match the very similar reply I got as a California
resident asserting my rights under California's "Right to Know" Act ,
regarding LinkedIn profile data and related
plagiarist wrote 1 day 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.
jorts wrote 17 hours 1 min ago:
100% the political campaigns pinging you is endless and you cannot
escape it. I have dozens of campaigns pinging me daily and I mark
them all as spam as I never signed up for this nonsense. Give me a
way to block them all and remove me from their database.
Ancalagon wrote 1 day ago:
Why do so many engineers willingly build things bad for society?
samaltmanfried wrote 19 hours 20 min ago:
My employer isn't particularly bad for society, but let's pretend
they are.
My company is a large employer of foreign workers. I already live in
fear of being priced out by foreign bodyshop firms. If I decided what
we were doing was immoral, and dug my heels in. I'd just be replaced
by a H-1B worker. If everyone else in my company decided they
wouldn't build the torment nexus, we'd all just be replaced by H-1B
workers. It'd be a minor inconvenience to the company, but they'd
weather it just fine. Under this system, any kind of collective
bargaining becomes impossible, moral, financial, or otherwise.
snarf21 wrote 20 hours 52 min ago:
It is mostly a combination of Sinclair's Law and "I have nothing to
hide" mindset.
globalnode wrote 22 hours 47 min ago:
also theyre subject to the same anonymity many other internet users
have and so dont feel any consequences for their actions.
ej88 wrote 1 day 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
biophysboy wrote 1 day 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
GorbachevyChase wrote 1 day ago:
The tribe wonât eat their own⦠probably.
FrustratedMonky wrote 1 day ago:
Evil pays more.
A common theme in a lot of movies, books, et..
Nezteb wrote 1 day ago:
[1] Immoral boot-licking human engineers are indistinguishable from
LLMs.
HTML [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_apples
Ancalagon wrote 1 day 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.
konart wrote 1 day 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 wrote 1 day ago:
Money can be exchanged for services.
Hope this helps.
krapp wrote 1 day ago:
Because they're paid enough to retire at 30.
Ancalagon wrote 1 day ago:
All these bright engineers canât figure out the bigger picture of
what theyâre building?
âHey boss man, why does this database âtracked_individualsâ
have columns for license plate numbers, home addresses, and
political affiliations?â
Give me a break
bigyabai wrote 22 hours 35 min ago:
Yes, many of them don't. They're fed convincing cover-stories
like "we need this to stop CSAM" or "this prevents terrorism",
and then put on a security theater about E2EE and military-grade
cryptography. They sleep like a baby because most of them
genuinely think they're the good guys, hell, even people on HN
appear to buy the obvious lie whenever Client Side Scanning or
Flock is brought up.
You can hire sociopaths to work the ~1% of jobs that require a
complete understanding of your moral bankruptcy. Mark Zuckerberg,
Tim Cook, Larry Ellison, none of these people ever apologized for
their ethical flexibility because it's precisely what qualifies
them for such a lucrative job. Persona can be a shell org with 20
evil engineers while their partners absentmindedly do the
integration work.
bombdailer wrote 1 day ago:
Because the highest values of our society are non-values.
bigyabai wrote 1 day ago:
"Oh boy! I've always wanted to work at [microsoft, apple, google,
etc.]!"
mikestew wrote 1 day ago:
Those aren't the companies OP is necessarily talking about. "I've
always wanted to work at Persona!", said no one, ever.
bigyabai wrote 23 hours 17 min 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.
globalnode wrote 22 hours 30 min ago:
oh thats a good point, kind of like the military or how
propaganda demonizes the enemy during a war, its us vs them.
mikestew wrote 1 day ago:
Because it generally pays well. I'd wax philosophically, but you can
come to your own conclusions from that little nugget.
popalchemist wrote 1 day 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.
asdfman123 wrote 22 hours 42 min ago:
Every accusation is a confession
popalchemist wrote 14 hours 16 min ago:
Not every. That would be DARVO. Sometimes a spade is a spade,
or a pedophile is a pedophile, to make a very clear example.
Ancalagon wrote 1 day ago:
You'd think empathy would just be enough, its very sad.
sebastianconcpt wrote 1 day ago:
Quite some time ago I said and now repeat:
Convenience is to humans, what bulb lights at night are to bugs.
themafia wrote 23 hours 41 min 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.
sebastianconcpt wrote 2 hours 20 min ago:
Surprisingly close minded and selective read. That way you'll see
black swans even in paradise (or the whatever utopialand of your
choice).
moffkalast wrote 23 hours 21 min 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.
themafia wrote 15 hours 20 min ago:
> Why a hospital?
Maternity is most often not "life and death." Is the maternity
ward just a convenience? Or is the cost worth the benefit? You
don't seem to be doing any form of honest analysis.
> Most home appliances are convenience personified, the
dishwasher, the microwave, the clothes dryer.
Yes, because, those save time. It's worth having a point of
view that other people saving their time, and thus freeing it
for more worthwhile endeavors is ultimately a net positive for
all of society. You pass these off as mere conveniences. It's a
rather bleak misanthropic outlook you seem to have acquired.
> Modern life is like at least 60% wastefulness in the name of
convenience.
People own cars to drive more than two blocks. You're only
making the most ridiculous version of the argument and you don't
have very much to back it up.
moffkalast wrote 11 hours 20 min ago:
Oh I disagree completely, births are a very life and death
situation for both involved if any compilations happen to set
in. It's extremely worth the benefit to have some doctors
around.
> people saving their time, and thus freeing it for more
worthwhile endeavors
Do we? Use it for more worthwhile endeavours? I doubt scrolling
an online feed of endless bullshit would qualify as that, and
most people seem to spend their left over time doing that
instead. We're dopamine rush optimizers, not some kind of
paragon who spends their time working for the good of society.
Now I'm not saying it makes any sense for us to go back to
washing things by hand, but I am saying that automating chores
and saving time is like heroin to us and that we'll pay every
cent we have for it, as OP's original point was.
> People own cars to drive more than two blocks
Yeah but once we have the ability to drive anywhere it's easy
to use it for all kinds of things that we really don't need it
for, cause it's just so convenient, fuel prices be damned :)
esafak wrote 1 day ago:
No pain, no gain.
FarmerPotato wrote 1 day ago:
Is this whole unreadable article just the output from an AI prompt
describing a techno-thriller?
random3 wrote 1 day 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.
FarmerPotato wrote 22 hours 35 min ago:
It's not my skills. I could decipher it if I spent enough time
(and had plain text).
the presentation is bad.
verbosity.
it takes many words for the writer to make a point.
that darn cat.
IAmGraydon wrote 21 hours 0 min ago:
I didn't find this to be the case at all. It's quite concise and
clear. There's just a lot of information presented.
dizhn wrote 8 hours 31 min ago:
Are you going to ignore the whole operating system emulation
which plays audio when you enter it? I think the article itself
is fine too but if this guy wanted to reach more people this
should have been plain text .
pharos92 wrote 1 day 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?
asdfman123 wrote 22 hours 48 min ago:
It's already crumbling. That's why we have AI-powered fascism in the
first place. Society destabilizes and a significant fraction of the
population says "perhaps authoritarianism is a good thing." It's
never worth it, though.
vpShane wrote 23 hours 40 min 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?
storus wrote 23 hours 50 min 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.
asdfman123 wrote 22 hours 45 min ago:
I would be careful with this kind of reasoning, because it suggests
corruption within a corporate model is inevitable, giving it
implicit permission to continue existing. It's not inevitable.
calgoo wrote 11 hours 45 min ago:
I would suggest it is inevitable when the goal is to grow without
end. The sociopaths buy the shares and push the businesses to
ether become "evil" or get pushed out and taken over. Its what
the current models leads to when there are no checks and
balances.
nemooperans wrote 23 hours 15 min ago:
This is the part that doesn't get enough attention. The historical
check on concentrated power wasn't just democracy or law â it was
that executing any large-scale agenda required thousands of people
who could refuse, drag their feet, or leak. AI doesn't just
automate tasks â it removes the human friction that was always an
informal veto on the worst ideas.
The surveillance apparatus isn't new. What's new is that you need
fewer people with moral objections in the loop to operate it.
ctoth wrote 1 day 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?
cthalupa wrote 22 hours 21 min ago:
Except it wasn't a production endpoint and there's no actual
security risk in having source maps available. It's more annoying
to read source code that has been minified, but if a security
professional tells you that minifying source code is something that
increases security, you should be wondering what other bullshit
they've pedaled you.
I'm not a fan of persona and have gone out of my way to not provide
my details to them even before this, and I really dislike Thiel,
but... let's be honest about the stuff we're complaining about.
xg15 wrote 1 day 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 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.
jcgrillo wrote 17 hours 27 min ago:
I felt compelled to write this email to 1password today:
Dear 1password,
Please stop trying to "innovate". I really like your password
manager. That's all I want. I don't want "automatic watchtower AI
phishing prevention" I just want a password manager that works
across my devices. Make it simple, make it secure, and don't change
it. You have a great product. Adding more features will only make
it worse. If you keep this bullshit up I will churn.
dlenski wrote 1 day 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.
nehal3m wrote 1 day 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.
whynotmaybe wrote 1 day ago:
Ever read 1984?
Who wins at the end?
ramuel wrote 1 day ago:
Winston, obviously. He left behind his free-thinking and became
unwavering to Big Brother. Truly a winner
dylan604 wrote 1 day ago:
Why, oh why, didn't I take the blue pill?
ferguess_k wrote 1 day 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.
dylan604 wrote 1 day 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.
mistrial9 wrote 1 day 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
ferguess_k wrote 1 day ago:
I don't think they are going to rise up this time. Maybe laying
down flat is more realistic.
measurablefunc wrote 1 day ago:
This time is different. The global system is not going to fall
apart like isolated kingdoms in the past.
GolfPopper wrote 20 hours 47 min ago:
It will instead eventually fall apart in more thoroughly
destructive ways. But not until it does a
possibly-unrecoverably (at least in the medium term) amount of
damage to civilization, humanity, and life on Earth first.
measurablefunc wrote 19 hours 59 min ago:
I agree but my point was that it will not be like any
previous collapse.
trinsic2 wrote 20 hours 59 min ago:
yep. There is too much infrastructure now. Its going to take a
lot for this to end.
neuralRiot wrote 23 hours 11 min ago:
â Whatever it is youâre seeking wonât come in the form
youâre expecting â Haruki Murakamiâ
dylan604 wrote 1 day ago:
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 wrote 1 day ago:
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 wrote 23 hours 6 min ago:
The weak link is that for âthe havesâ to have, the
âhave -notsâ 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 wrote 1 day 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.
measurablefunc wrote 1 day ago:
Goliath's Curse by Luke Kemp covers it pretty well I think.
GolfPopper wrote 20 hours 43 min ago:
Likewise, thank you for the recommendation. I obviously haven't
read Goliath's Curse yet, but it seems like Joseph Tainter's The
Collapse of Complex Societies (1988) might also be interesting
for the same readers.
ferguess_k wrote 1 day ago:
Thanks for the recommendation.
jtbayly wrote 1 day ago:
[flagged]
tomhow wrote 21 hours 27 min ago:
Please don't post LLM output on HN. If an article is unreadable, we
accept a link to an archived version of the original content (on a
site like Archive.org or Archive.today), not a summary, because then
people comment in response to the summary, which may not be an
accurate representation of the original content.
cloverich wrote 1 day 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] [2]
HTML [1]: https://withpersona.com/blog/post-incident-review-source-map-e...
HTML [2]: https://x.com/Persona_IDV/status/2025048195773198385?s=20
HTML [3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47136036
cloverich wrote 16 hours 8 min ago:
The author has published part 2 of the series... def worth the read:
HTML [1]: https://vmfunc.re/blog/persona-2
kelvinjps10 wrote 1 day ago:
They did good damage control with that post
aeldidi wrote 1 day ago:
The withpersona.com URL seems to return 404.
cloverich wrote 1 day ago:
fixed ty
ArchieScrivener wrote 1 day ago:
Why the myspace music?
ericd wrote 22 hours 30 min ago:
Is that⦠Chrono Trigger?
OneDeuxTriSeiGo wrote 1 day ago:
whimsy
MattDaEskimo wrote 1 day ago:
What can those do from a separate country, who unfortunately had their
identity verified through Persona (LinkedIn in my case).
shimman wrote 1 day 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 wrote 1 day ago:
> advocate for homegrown solutions over US tech.
Some sweet irony about this btw.
shimman wrote 1 day 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 wrote 23 hours 52 min 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 wrote 1 day ago:
From the blog post I've recently read; [1] 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 â thatâs their Data
Protection Officer. If you want to object to them using your
documents as AI training data under âlegitimate interests,â this
is where you do it.
4. Think twice before verifying. That blue badge might not be worth
what youâre trading for it. A checkmark is cosmetic. Biometric data
is forever.
HTML [1]: https://thelocalstack.eu/posts/linkedin-identity-verificatio...
tasoeur wrote 11 hours 50 min ago:
Just requested deletion through this form:
HTML [1]: https://withpersona.com/dsar
deaux wrote 14 hours 25 min ago:
> 1. Request your data. Email idv-privacy@withpersona.com or
privacy@withpersona.com. Under GDPR, they have 30 days to respond.
They just won't respond, then you can wait for 4+ years and nothing
will happen to them. [0]
[0]
HTML [1]: https://noyb.eu/en/project/dpa/dpc-ireland
hbcondo714 wrote 1 day 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 [1]
1.4K+ points, 490+ comments
HTML [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47098245
DIR <- back to front page