How OpenAI, the US government and Persona built an identity surveillance machine

[waffleiron]

Reminder of the HN guidelines for commenting, as the majority of comments just talks about the design of the page at the moment:

In Comments

Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.

Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead.

Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.

[iamnothere]

Quick tldr summary from the end:

the source code reveals a platform that:

- files Suspicious Activity Reports directly with FinCEN

- files Suspicious Transaction Reports with FINTRAC

- tags STRs with intelligence program codenames (Project SHADOW, Project LEGION…)

- maintains biometric face databases with 3-year retention

- runs 269 distinct verification checks against every user

- compares your selfie to political figures with facial similarity scoring

- flags you as a “suspicious entity” based on your face alone

- classifies selfie spoof risk with hardcoded rejection thresholds

- screens against 14 categories of adverse media from terrorism to espionage

- lets operators upload custom FinCEN screening lists and run them against everyone

- continuously re-screens on configurable intervals

- tracks you across 13 types of lists from browser fingerprints to geolocations

- screens crypto wallets against sanctioned addresses via Chainalysis

- runs experimental unnamed ML models on your biometric data

- encrypts data with shared symmetric keys while admitting they “depend on obfuscation”

- runs two parallel PEP screening systems with known incompatibilities

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.

[quadhome]

Wherein a very basic KYC system is described. Every bank and money transmitter in the US have either built an identical system or purchased one.

[iamnothere]

Why on earth is an AI chatbot app doing KYC and submitting FinCEN reports?

[lambdas]

Online safety act passed in the uk on 26/10/2023, aligning suspiciously close with the mysterious advent of OpenAI’s screening tool

[vmfunc]

author here. currently in touch with persona's CEO as mentioned on twitter, part 2 and 3 coming soon. i understand the criticism on the design of the site but it has no place here on hackernews. the content is what matters. i designed my website to be an experience rather than sanitized white on black minimalist slop, whether you like it or not is completely fair, then just use reading mode in your browser.

[mainmailman]

I loved it, I’ve never seen something like it

[chneu]

I enjoyed the website.

[righthand]

I love your site design, but please consider that people may not take your content seriously because it is so expressive. It is cool looking but hard to concentrate on the actual content. This is distracting from the point you are making and makes it harder to circulate this to non-tech peoples.

An experience yes but one that is noisy to the information you’re trying to expose.

Deflecting criticism of the noisiness because you want to focus on the content is just creating another distraction to discuss instead of the content. The cat, the music, the lowercase text, low contrast color scheme all create a layer of “is this serious?”

[iamnothere]

It’s a good design, props for doing something different and interesting.

[user2722]

I liked it.

[DauntingPear7]

Crazy how some people want an entirely sterile internet

[tw1984]

We all need to be extremely happy for the fact that AI is not controlled by people like Altman.

[throwaway911282]

And Dario?

[throwaway911282]

that's the worst website ever.

So Anthropic partners with Palantir and now we have this..

[coumbaya]

Okay so not dissing on the website itself (btw reader mode isn't always available depending on context...) this reads like a total mess. I guess it's too messy to be AI generated so that's good, but it doesn't feel professional at all, is this a fanfic ?

[dev1ycan]

I avoid anything with persona on it like wildfire.

[downboots]

The irony of flags

[b112]

How is this even upvoted. It's the most offensive website since ICQ.

Music blaring, things bouncing in front of text, and the link goes a page that says nothing about OpenAI.

[jamiepond]

great dystopian music choice <3

[bob1029]

Ah yes. Forcing the user to interact so you can make them listen to trash music. Excellent web design tactic.

[gambiting]

>>so you can make them listen to trash music

The music is awesome, I left the page open in the background so I can listen to it. It's just gameboy-era chiptunes.

[rw_panic0_0]

the music choice bro...

[notachatbot123]

autoplaying_music+cat_chasing_my_mouse_cursor+lowercaseeverything+no_short_summary_upfront_tl;dr?

[saubeidl]

Remember how they were spreading propaganda about a supposed Chinese "social credit score" dystopia?

It was aspirational projection. That is what the American oligarchy is trying to build.

1984 is coming to the west.

[jasonvorhe]

Have yet to meet a Chinese who doesn't start laughing if you ask them about it because it's just stupid propaganda.