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How OpenAI, the US government and Persona built an identity surveillance machine
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Overview
OpenAI, the US government, and Persona have developed an identity surveillance system that compiles reports on individuals for federal authorities. The system, known as openai-watchlistdb.withpersona.com, has access to data on 27 million individuals.
Summary from vmfunc.re.
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Hacker News · vmfunc.re
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Based on 5 sampled comments from this thread. Analyzed 2026-02-19.
- Concern: The platform's reliance on biometric face databases and extensive verification checks raises significant privacy and ethical concerns, particularly regarding surveillance and potential misuse of data.
- Concern: The tagging of Suspicious Transaction Reports with intelligence program codenames suggests a troubling level of government oversight and potential overreach in monitoring individuals.
- Concern: The ability to flag users as 'suspicious entities' based solely on facial recognition poses serious risks for discrimination and wrongful profiling.