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Comment by 827a | Hacker News Reader

Its a very well known fact that all of our geopolitical adversaries have sophisticated fake American ID markets. This doesn't stop any of the most dangerous adversaries from getting access to systems protected by this technology. DeepSeek is going to go buy 20,000 fake IDs for their fake distillation accounts and keep on keeping on. This just hurts normal people, Americans and non-Americans, who might struggle to authenticate or be disallowed because of their place of birth. Pointless CYA, and beneath a research group whose intention is to invent the machine god.

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It's about covering their arse before reopening Fable 5

They don't care if anyone is using a fake ID, they care that they can send the hot potato back to the American government. That gives them a legitimate "not my fault if people can make fake ids. In fact it's your fault"

Persona isn’t just an id upload. It’s also face scan by video.

So a fake ID but using your face?

How would they know? Does the US government expose their database to private businesses? I always wondered how these things work.

I normally run away from these ID checks. It’s just a matter of time until lone of these databases with everyone passports and videos get hacked. And vibe coding only makes it more likely.

I don’t care how good Claude is, it’s not good enough for that kind of risk.

Surprised there isn't a "Fake Face" market like a mannequin face delivered to your door.

The latest ones make you smile, shut eyes / wink, look up, down, etc. plus for Apple they use the lidar and the IR camera for heat.

Not everyone has a device that can use lidar to map the face so it can’t be a requirement.

Kids have been defeating these smile and close your eyes things using photo mode in video games to control a character to perform the actions.

https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/

> It's about covering their arse before reopening Fable 5

This help page has been there for a long time. Long before Fable was announced.

Their ID process isn’t new.

They might use it in the future to gate access to Fable if they can conclude that it’s sufficient to comply with the regulation, but the fact that they had this process in place already and they’re not using it for the Fable situation suggests there’s more to it.

Ha that's a good point I didn't realise the process was pre-dating the whole fable 5 story

Thank you. This is an expansion of surveillance. Most concerning to me is how few people understand government's access to this data. People treat AI like a diary, and the government can request that data at anytime.

Indeed - Persona is backed by Founders Fund - also linked to lovely companies like Palantir, Flock & Anduril. Some people still (claim they) can’t see the massive dragnet swirling around all of society right now.

It’s especially frustrating with Anthropic because we’ve known about issues with Persona for a while now, with discord. But anthropic leadership I guess is like any company leadership - stupid, blind, and lazy. Just go with the vendor whose name you know.

Anthropic could have EASILY made an in-house solution with < 100 employees. But no, they have to make the same mistakes that behemoths like IBM and Oracle make. Y’all haven’t even IPO’d yet and we’re already entering the “sleepwalk to your grave” phase of the corporate cycle.

In-house would almost certainly mean future prosecution by the US. Using a company connected to Palantir means any employee of the US government that wants to keep their job won't ask questions.

How America Works, 2026 Colorized:

America passes many laws but doesn't enforce the majority of them and allows people to grow largely unencumbered unless their initiatives threaten established players or the system itself.

The Dissident: If you are vocal about the system, you get locked out at every opportunity from the things you depend on to sustain yourself and communicate (social media, housing and banking).

Red Ocean: If you try to compete in a red ocean and don't give a cut to the players in that space you're shut down with frivolous lawsuits for example by buried by frivolous patent or copyright claims, liability lawsuits, and licensure requirements.

Blue Ocean: If you are a compliant person and grow in a blue ocean, once you are big enough to where you can't realistically back down, you are threatened with prison time and sanctions unless you are onboard with the government's actual agenda and its preferred partners.

Secret Societies: Above a certain point you are expected to compromise yourself with blackmail to grow even further and become a part of the brotherhood that actually runs the government agenda.

I'm just a petty conspiracy theorist, but my assumption is their use of Persona was part of "the deal" they've been encouraged to make, and what you're seeing is a company being brought to heel.

> But anthropic leadership I guess is like any company leadership - stupid, blind, and lazy

Has it ever occurred to you that this is intentional?

All those Bilderberg and WEF forums and Peter Thiel's Dialog Club are not for nothing

The funny thing. I've talked to normies about this. Frequently their response is "good to solves <bad thing>" But they never seem to wrap their head arround this is a tax on non-violators. Using identity verification to stop underage people from seeing porn is never realized that people that are above 18 are put at risk over this, or how it could be extended to now "adult"/"community decided 'obscene' materials" (that's what adult content is) is now restricted. (Which can include medical abortion information, disucssions arround gender, political campaigns that are unpopular, etc)

Many of the people that talk about the “massive dragnet swirling around” are posting all their details to social media and checking in on their Ring cameras, and they’re also volunteering for the persona uploads.

Make sure you write it fully qualified:

Flock (YC S17)

Flock is a Y Combinator company.

Not just the government! techcrunch.com/2026/06/18/texas-government-data-breach-allowed-hackers-to-steal-3-million-drivers-licenses-and-passports/

> People treat AI like a diary, and the government can request that data at anytime.

Isn't the case for any US company? I'm working in an european SaaS business, and we consider that any data that goes through Azure or Google Workspace can be accessed by the US government on a whim, even if their datacenter is on our soil.

If it's your customers' data you can use E2EE. If you need to read it, it is probably cheapest to keep everything on EU infrastructure to avoid paying repeat egress costs.

You might also consider shipping software-as-software, which doesn't need cloud resources, and the data can only be searched one customer at a time.

They also force tap access to the data

also it's not protected by the 4th amendment like an actual diary would, right? it's bullshit

> Pointless CYA

They are literally being forced to do this by the government. The counter-ask if for them to self immolate in order to take a principled stand, as access to all their models is banned.

Perhaps they should stop being holier than thou wackjobs and try the “shut the fuck up and act like a business” strategy of being a business.

Seems to be working for every other AI company.

If you think the field you are working in is more dangerous and important to the future of national security than i.e. nuclear energy and nuclear bombs you should really not just shut up and act like a cold blooded capitalist.

It feels like people here are not able to separate their personal dislike of the effective altruist types from a real debate on how big the stakes of AI are.

It’s tough to separate with them because “for the greater good” and “saving people from themselves” has historically not gone over well, especially when we all know it’s a veneer and get cold blooded capitalism.

> especially when we all know it’s a veneer and get cold blooded capitalism

This is what I don’t really get about the AI discourse… I don’t have any reason to think this is all a veneer over capitalism. We don’t know what goes on in their head but the track record of the cofounders of Anthropic is quite honest so it feels like a conspiracy theory to suggest they are purposefully getting themselves nationalized when the simplest answer is that there is real documented concern on AI safety risk

Seems to work pretty well at keeping people from playing around with anthrax and fully automatic weapons.

Dunno about anthrax, but fully automated weapons are really easy to come by.

Just pay the bribes already.

Or move to Europe/China/insert lovely tax haven here. They don't have to base their operations in the USA, they CHOOSE to. I will cancel my subscription because of this, and happily use DeepSeek/mimo or whatever else comes for a fraction of the cost. China won't and mostly can't do anything with my data, the US government can and certainly will.

I'll pick my poison thanks and choose Chinese surveillance.

> I'll pick my poison thanks and choose Chinese surveillance.

Assuming they won’t trade or sell it back to the US or whoever?

There is no way for Anthropic to move and remain competitive and useful. Their staff are (primarily) in the US. Thousands of people with mortgages, marriages, kids in school, recurring medical appointments with their trusted providers, people who speak only English. This idea that US companies could just hop jurisdictions because the state turned against them and their customers is an insane one.

> DeepSeek is going to go buy 20,000 fake IDs for their fake distillation accounts

I'm rooting for China here, feels strange but well

>disallowed because of their place of birth

I noticed this is normalized too, there’s a systematic discrimination just based on the fact where you were born, as if anyone controls that, and yes, you will be added on some list, get denied or further scrutiny based on that fact only.

I agree this is entirely theatrical.

There is much stronger IDV technology than this, but it isn't as consistent across the customer base. You would have a significantly more difficult time defeating something like Chexsystems with fake IDs. If the AI models are truly so scary as to require ITAR-style restrictions, then I wonder if having an adverse financial background might be a reasonable canary for preventing access. These same kinds of questions come up for obtaining security clearances.

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