{Photo courtesy of BBC}
By Hilda Kavai.
Kenyan law enforcement agents seized machines suspected of containing Worldcoin data from a warehouse on Mombasa Road in Nairobi on Saturday, 5th August, 2023. The team brought the equipment to the headquarters of the Directorate of Criminal Investigations for additional examination.
It comes after the Kenyan authorities halted Worldcoin operations and launched an investigation into the company. Worldcoin had been scanning Kenyan residents’ irises in exchange for 25 World tokens. However, after privacy experts voiced worries that sensitive data acquired from scanning a person’s iris could wind up in the wrong hands, Interior Cabinet Secretary Kithure Kindiki suspended the firm’s operations. It also enhanced the company’s scrutiny by the authorities.
The Worldcoin (WLD) token is named after the Worldcoin project. The project’s goal is to create a World ID ecosystem that will employ iris scans to verify the identification of individuals using financial services. World ID assures that people using these services are real people, not automated robots.
The Worldcoin project is led by a non-profit organization called “Tools for Humanity.” Sam Altman, the founder of Open AI, co-founded this group. Notably, notable venture capital firms have invested in the initiative, including Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto unit, a16z.
Altman, the founder of Open AI, which created the chat bot ChatGPT, says he thinks the initiative will aid in determining if someone is human or a robot. Worldcoin claims it chose Kenya as the first African country to launch the platform due to the country’s already thriving IT sector and the more than four million Kenyans who already trade in crypto currency.
According to the article, Immaculate Kassait, Data Commissioner of the Data Protection Office, which previously registered Worldcoin’s parent business (Tools for Humanity) as a data processor, stated that Tools for Humanity neglected to reveal its genuine goals during registration.