Worldcoin is scanning eyeballs to build a global ID and finance system. Governments are not impressed
Retrieved on:
Tuesday, August 8, 2023
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The silver spheres, known as “Orbs”, are part of the Worldcoin platform, which officially launched in July 2023 after an 18-month testing phase.
Key Points:
- The silver spheres, known as “Orbs”, are part of the Worldcoin platform, which officially launched in July 2023 after an 18-month testing phase.
- Governments are taking note: the Worldcoin platform has already been suspended in Kenya, and is under investigation in several other countries.
Gaze into the Orb
- The Orb uses iris scans to uniquely identify a person.
- The Worldcoin website currently lists 60 Orb locations worldwide, particularly in Europe, Asia, North America and South America, and notes there will also be Orb “pop-ups”.
- At the time of writing, there appear to be no Orb locations in Australia, so people in Australia cannot earn WLD tokens “for being human”.
Cash for eyeballs jeopardises human rights
- Independent reporting suggests the promise of “free” cryptocurrency was a more common motive.
- In most locations, Worldcoin offers a “genesis grant” of 25 units of its WLD cryptocurrency when users scan their irises.
- (The value of WLD fluctuates, but the grant has been worth around US$50, or $A75, over the past month.)
- Offering money for sensitive data arguably makes privacy – a human right – a luxury only the wealthy can afford.
‘Cataloguing eyeballs’: the risks of using biometric data
- Unlike a driver’s licence or a passport, you cannot replace your iris if the data is compromised.
- Surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden has criticised Worldcoin for “cataloguing eyeballs”, and tweeted about the unacceptable risks:
Don’t use biometrics for anything. - In either case, the user must simply trust the company to delete the biometric data, or appropriately secure it against misuse.
- Journalist Eileen Guo also points out that Worldcoin has not yet clarified whether it still uses stored biometric data to train AI models and whether it has deleted biometric data collected during its test phase.
Regulatory action
- Regulators in several countries are taking action.
- The Kenyan government has now suspended Worldcoin’s activities, stating regulatory concerns surrounding the project “require urgent action”.