Before Dawn

Digital identities, persistent storage and interoperability: the Palantirization of society.

Outside the bedroom window, just before dawn, the birds have begun chirping again. First the obsessive soloists, then the diffuse chorus. A sign that spring is almost at the door. Despite a climate that cannot seem to make up its mind, the system has already updated its firmware, reactivating the ornithological subroutine.

ChatGPT tells me they start singing before dawn because sound travels better and is more stable. Less background noise, less wind, fewer human interferences. In practice, it is the optimization of a biological broadcast protocol.

On X I read that we may eventually be able to decode their language with artificial intelligence. In the video, a graphical interface transforms their chirps into dynamic three-dimensional models. Each note a node.

Between a blackbird marking its territory and the social chatter of sparrows, the first garden maintenance tasks have also resumed. My daughter rolls in the soil wearing her new overalls.

Somewhere I read that a house without a garden is a house without a soul. I think that is true. This microcosm of human beings, little birds, lizards, snakes, squirrels, ants, and wolf spiders seems almost to exist separately from everything outside — and from what awaits me in cyberspace.

When I was younger, I used to take refuge in cyberspace to avoid dealing with real life; today the opposite is increasingly true.

In the black waters of our OLED screens, it is no longer possible to breathe. Wars, massacres, fatal accidents, anger, disappointment, sadness, addiction… and systems of control that grow ever more pressing.

Promises of efficiency, security, protection of rights, and convenience are the foundations of the new cybernetic Babel we are building, at whose apex the Eye of Sauron stands watch.

An infrastructure designed to devour humanity and transform it into dashboards and digitized human capital: KPIs and scorecards to predict, control, convert, reform, recycle. The System does not care to know our name; only our correlations. Numbers, identification codes, biometric data, addresses, means of payment, movements, habits. Everything becomes a relational graph.

Society is entering a phase we could call palantirization: the systematic conversion of identity into a computable node. It does not take much, only three things:

• Persistent digital identities

• Massive storage and algorithmic correlation capabilities

• Interoperability between public and private systems

Recently, three researchers analyzed the age-verification system used by Discord, based on Persona, a U.S. identity verification company also funded by Peter Thiel. During their analysis, they identified an exposed frontend that allowed them to observe parts of the architecture.

There they found thousands of accessible files revealing a surveillance system far broader than simple biometric verification services.

Not only selfie-to-document comparison, but checks against government watchlists, analysis for terrorism, money laundering, illicit trafficking, screening of politically exposed persons, AML screening, device and browser fingerprinting, data retention for extended periods. Integrations with crypto analysis tools. FedRAMP-compliant versions for government cloud environments. Even analysis of the background of selfies.

A domain called “openai-watchlistdb.withpersona.com” also emerged, suggesting the existence of watchlist databases linked to identity verification requests for OpenAI users — which I recall has just become an asset of the United States Department of War.

After the discovery, Discord stated that it would no longer use Persona. It matters little: one out, another in.

But the scaffolding of the monstrous Babel remains, and this is likely only the tip of the iceberg.

In some jurisdictions, such as California, there is already discussion of pushing verification mechanisms down to the operating system level. Not only for laptops or smartphones, but for any device equipped with an operating system: from calculators to automobiles.

It is the coherent evolution of the architecture: ever deeper, to sustain an ever taller Tower. We too, like blackbirds and sparrows, are studied by systems that transform us into three-dimensional graphs on a glowing dashboard.

Smile, a selfie is enough!

On my desk now lies The Hanged Man (XII).

The man is suspended by one foot, but in the Thoth deck the posture is almost cruciform and phallic-alchemical. It is the initiatory paradox. A reversal of perspective to block conditioned reflexes, to reflect and overturn paradigms.

Perhaps this is the point. Not to flee into the garden or into cyberspace. To suspend automatisms and face the world for what it is, with calm resolve.

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