Worldcoin Ignored Initial Order To Stop Iris Scans in Kenya, Records Show (techcrunch.com) 11
Months before Kenya finally banned iris scans by Sam Altman's crypto startup Worldcoin, the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (ODPC) had ordered its parent company, Tools for Humanity, to stop collecting personal data. From a report: The ODPC had in May this year instructed the crypto startup to stop iris scans and the collection of facial recognition and other personal data in Kenya, a letter sent to Worldcoin and seen by TechCrunch shows. Tools for Humanity, the company building Worldcoin, did not stop taking biometric data until early this month when Kenya's ministry of interior and administration, a more powerful entity, suspended it following its official launch. Worldcoin's official launch led to a spike in the number of people queuing up to have their eyeballs scanned in exchange for "free money," drawing the attention of authorities.
The letter shows that ODPC had instructed Worldcoin to cease collecting data for intruding on individuals' privacy by gathering biometric data without a well-established and compelling justification. Further, it said Worldcoin had failed to obtain valid consent from people before scanning their irises, saying its agents failed to inform its subjects about the data security and privacy measures it took, and how the data collected would be used or processed. "Your client is hereby instructed to cease the collection of all facial recognition data and iris scans, from your subscribers. This cessation should be implemented without delay and should include all ongoing and future data processing activities," said Rose Mosero, in a letter to Tools for Humanity that outlined the concerns.
The letter shows that ODPC had instructed Worldcoin to cease collecting data for intruding on individuals' privacy by gathering biometric data without a well-established and compelling justification. Further, it said Worldcoin had failed to obtain valid consent from people before scanning their irises, saying its agents failed to inform its subjects about the data security and privacy measures it took, and how the data collected would be used or processed. "Your client is hereby instructed to cease the collection of all facial recognition data and iris scans, from your subscribers. This cessation should be implemented without delay and should include all ongoing and future data processing activities," said Rose Mosero, in a letter to Tools for Humanity that outlined the concerns.
You can't do that to our people. (Score:2)
Re: You can't do that to our people. (Score:2)
...are they doing that to their people though?
Re: (Score:2)
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So would you be ok for lets say a Russian or Chinese company to mass-collect biometric data on US citizens, in exchange giving them a small fee or amount of crypto currency?
Re: (Score:1)
If someone wants to sell their own info to a Chinese, Russian, US, Canadian or any other company for a bit of scratch, why not?
It's not like the US gov't does anything effective to keep the information they collect on us (including biometric, biographical, and medical history data) secure from Chinese and/or Russian hackers or take any real accountability/responsibility for handing over that information on a silver platter to the (other) bad guys, beyond maybe an "oops, sorry, our bad:."
Just so we're all on the same page... (Score:2)
Corporations ignore the law (Score:1)
And once they're big enough they just buy laws, like Uber did in California where they spent half a billion (that we know of) tricking people into legalizing 18th century piece work.
It is crapto (Score:1)
What do you expect? Fraud, scams and as illegal as they think they can get away with it.
Worldcoin does not store iris scans (Score:2)
If that's the main ask of the letter, Worldcoin probably just sent a letter back explaining that they do not "collect" iris scans or data that can be used for face recognition. What they store is cryptographic hashes of phase information from Gabor-wavelet transforms of iris scans. Once the phase information is gathered, most of it is thrown away, leaving a relatively low-dimensional binary image that is al