World coin collecting biometrics of Kenyans
Have you heard of World Coin? What is the value of your iris scan? World Coin scans the iris of the public in exchange of the WorldCoin cryptocurrency. I came across them at Sarit Center today. Is this legal? Has Kenyan government and Office of the Data Protection Commissioner given then the go ahead to mass scan the biometrics of Kenyans? According to the project’s team, around 30 orbs that can scan people’s eyes and create a unique identifier are located all across the world. Worldcoin orbs can be found in France, Sudan, Indonesia, Kenya, and Chile. Worldcoin’s orbs are maintained by “Orb Operators” who get rewarded for soliciting potential Worldcoin participants. Depending on when the person got in on the project, token recipients can get between $10 and $200 worth of the digital asset worldcoin (WC). The popular whistleblower Edward Snowden scorned Sam Altman’s Worldcoin intro tweet as well. “This looks like it produces a global (hash) database of people’s iris scans (for ‘fairness’), and waves away the implications by saying ‘we deleted the scans,’” Snowden said. “Yeah, but you save the *hashes* produced by the scans. Hashes that match *future* scans. Don’t catalogue eyeballs,” Snowden added. https://news.bitcoin.com/iris-scanning-worldcoin-idea-fuels-objections-from-...
Thanks Mwendwa, Buzzfeed did a great job investigating this in May this year. They quoted the data commissioner in this article that’s worth reading. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/richardnieva/worldcoin-crypto-eyeball-s... Regards. Linda Bonyo On Tue, 15 Nov 2022 at 18:25, Mwendwa Kivuva via KICTANet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:
Have you heard of World Coin? What is the value of your iris scan? World Coin scans the iris of the public in exchange of the WorldCoin cryptocurrency. I came across them at Sarit Center today. Is this legal? Has Kenyan government and Office of the Data Protection Commissioner given then the go ahead to mass scan the biometrics of Kenyans?
According to the project’s team, around 30 orbs that can scan people’s eyes and create a unique identifier are located all across the world. Worldcoin orbs can be found in France, Sudan, Indonesia, Kenya, and Chile. Worldcoin’s orbs are maintained by “Orb Operators” who get rewarded for soliciting potential Worldcoin participants. Depending on when the person got in on the project, token recipients can get between $10 and $200 worth of the digital asset worldcoin (WC).
The popular whistleblower Edward Snowden scorned Sam Altman’s Worldcoin intro tweet as well. “This looks like it produces a global (hash) database of people’s iris scans (for ‘fairness’), and waves away the implications by saying ‘we deleted the scans,’” Snowden said. “Yeah, but you save the *hashes* produced by the scans. Hashes that match *future* scans. Don’t catalogue eyeballs,” Snowden added.
https://news.bitcoin.com/iris-scanning-worldcoin-idea-fuels-objections-from-...
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Thanks Kivuva for bringing this to our attention, and thanks Linda for sharing the insightful article. I must say it is very worrying as Worldcoin has collected alot of data. What are they planning to do with it? Can this data give them access to say peoples health records, bank accounts etc.? And do they expect us to believe the below statement? *Worldcoin says that once its systems are perfected, it will anonymize and delete users’ biometric data, thereby guaranteeing their privacy. But the company still has not committed to a timeline, even though it has captured and stored almost a half million iris scans to train its algorithms.* On Wed, Nov 16, 2022 at 10:24 AM Linda Bonyo via KICTANet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:
Thanks Mwendwa,
Buzzfeed did a great job investigating this in May this year. They quoted the data commissioner in this article that’s worth reading.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/richardnieva/worldcoin-crypto-eyeball-s...
Regards. Linda Bonyo
On Tue, 15 Nov 2022 at 18:25, Mwendwa Kivuva via KICTANet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:
Have you heard of World Coin? What is the value of your iris scan? World Coin scans the iris of the public in exchange of the WorldCoin cryptocurrency. I came across them at Sarit Center today. Is this legal? Has Kenyan government and Office of the Data Protection Commissioner given then the go ahead to mass scan the biometrics of Kenyans?
According to the project’s team, around 30 orbs that can scan people’s eyes and create a unique identifier are located all across the world. Worldcoin orbs can be found in France, Sudan, Indonesia, Kenya, and Chile. Worldcoin’s orbs are maintained by “Orb Operators” who get rewarded for soliciting potential Worldcoin participants. Depending on when the person got in on the project, token recipients can get between $10 and $200 worth of the digital asset worldcoin (WC).
The popular whistleblower Edward Snowden scorned Sam Altman’s Worldcoin intro tweet as well. “This looks like it produces a global (hash) database of people’s iris scans (for ‘fairness’), and waves away the implications by saying ‘we deleted the scans,’” Snowden said. “Yeah, but you save the *hashes* produced by the scans. Hashes that match *future* scans. Don’t catalogue eyeballs,” Snowden added.
https://news.bitcoin.com/iris-scanning-worldcoin-idea-fuels-objections-from-...
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KICTANet - The Power of Communities, is Kenya's premier ICT policy engagement platform.
-- *__________________________________________________________________* *Linda Bonyo* (Ms.) | CEO, *Lawyers Hub * *_**__________________________________________________________*
The Lawyers Hub is a Law-Tech organisation that works on Digital policy and Justice innovation. Headquartered in Kenya and serving the global south, The Lawyers hub runs the Africa Digital Policy Institute, Africa Law Tech association, The Africa Startup Law Accelerator and convenes the annual Africa Law Tech Festival and the Africa Legal Innovation week on Justice innovation. The organisation is the publisher of the Africa Journal on Law & Tech. The Lawyers Hub work is focused on Privacy and Data Protection, Artificial intelligence, Intellectual Property, Digital Identity, Internet Governance, Digital Tax and lending, Tech and Democracy.
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KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.
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So basically money for your virtual eyeballs? The question is how many of us (Wanjiku) understand the ramifications of having your digital eyeballs in a database no one really knows the use? It's simple. The government needs to protect its citizens. Regards *Ali Hussein* Fintech | Digital Transformation Tel: +254 713 601113 Twitter: @AliHKassim LinkedIn: Ali's Profile <http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim> <http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim> Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with. On Tue, Nov 15, 2022 at 8:25 PM Mwendwa Kivuva via KICTANet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:
Have you heard of World Coin? What is the value of your iris scan? World Coin scans the iris of the public in exchange of the WorldCoin cryptocurrency. I came across them at Sarit Center today. Is this legal? Has Kenyan government and Office of the Data Protection Commissioner given then the go ahead to mass scan the biometrics of Kenyans?
According to the project’s team, around 30 orbs that can scan people’s eyes and create a unique identifier are located all across the world. Worldcoin orbs can be found in France, Sudan, Indonesia, Kenya, and Chile. Worldcoin’s orbs are maintained by “Orb Operators” who get rewarded for soliciting potential Worldcoin participants. Depending on when the person got in on the project, token recipients can get between $10 and $200 worth of the digital asset worldcoin (WC).
The popular whistleblower Edward Snowden scorned Sam Altman’s Worldcoin intro tweet as well. “This looks like it produces a global (hash) database of people’s iris scans (for ‘fairness’), and waves away the implications by saying ‘we deleted the scans,’” Snowden said. “Yeah, but you save the *hashes* produced by the scans. Hashes that match *future* scans. Don’t catalogue eyeballs,” Snowden added.
https://news.bitcoin.com/iris-scanning-worldcoin-idea-fuels-objections-from-...
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KICTANet is a multi-stakeholder Think Tank for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. KICTANet is a catalyst for reform in the Information and Communication Technology sector. Its work is guided by four pillars of Policy Advocacy, Capacity Building, Research, and Stakeholder Engagement.
KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.
KICTANet - The Power of Communities, is Kenya's premier ICT policy engagement platform.
participants (4)
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Ali Hussein
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Grace Githaiga
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Linda Bonyo
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Mwendwa Kivuva