Suspended or investigated by many countries, can Worldcoin maintain a high growth rate?

According to the official website, Worldcoin currently has more than 2.2 million World IDs generated through the Orb iris information collector, and Orb’s business has expanded to more than 35 cities in more than 20 countries around the world. Especially after the currency was issued, the number of people who registered for World ID doubled.

However, the rapid growth of World APP has also attracted the attention of relevant regulatory authorities of various governments.

On August 2, Kenya, the African country with the highest Orb usage rate, announced that it would suspend the project and continue to collect iris information. As the first country to explicitly suspend the Orb business, Kenya is sounding the alarm for many countries. So far, Germany, the United Kingdom, France and other countries have also launched investigations on Worldcoin:

1. The Kenyan government suspends Worldcoin-related activities;

2. German financial regulator Bafin is investigating Worldcoin;

3. Legal privacy regulator: The legality of Worldcoin “seems to be in doubt” and is assisting the Bavarian authorities in the investigation;

4. Reuters: UK data watchdog to conduct further investigation into Worldcoin.

Obviously, there is a certain conflict between the collection of biological information data and the current data protection regulations, and as a “decentralized” and borderless blockchain project, the data collected by Worldcoin is in storage, attribution, circulation, use, etc. Links are difficult to apply to the laws and regulations of a single region.

In this regard, Odaily Planet Daily inquired about the relevant regulations of some major countries/regions:

1. Kenya: The definition of biometric technology in Kenya is mainly based on its “Data Protection Act 2019” and “Identification and Registration Act 2019” and other laws and regulations. Under these laws, an individual’s biometric data is considered sensitive personal data and must be collected and used with explicit consent and a legitimate purpose.

2. European Union: The European Union restricts the collection and use of biometric data through the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Under the GDPR, individuals must expressly consent to the collection and use of their biodata and have the right to access, correct, delete and restrict access to their biodata. In addition, the GDPR requires data processors to take appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect the security and privacy of biological data.

3. United Kingdom: According to the United Kingdom’s “Data Protection Act 2018” and the “Human Rights Act”, personal biometric data is considered sensitive data and is subject to special protection. When using biometrics, applicable data protection principles and legal requirements must be complied with, including explicit consent, legitimate purpose and transparency, among others.

4. China: China has enacted laws such as the Personal Information Protection Law and the Data Security Law to protect personal data privacy and data security, including biometric data.

5. Singapore: Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Act provides for the protection of biometric data. The law requires data processors to comply with specific data protection principles, such as clear purpose limitation, fair use and security protection.

Among them, the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has a higher level of legal effect.

Because of this, Worldcoin indicated in the biometric consent form disclosed on its official website:

“We comply with the principles of the GDPR regarding privacy matters. If your country’s data privacy laws do not meet the protection level of the GDPR, we still process your data in accordance with the GDPR (the protection specification).”

Specifically, in Section 3.6 of the “Biometric Consent Form”, Worldcoin detailed the rules that different regions follow when collecting and transferring data and the measures to avoid hidden risks. In general, “we will not profit from users’ biological data in any way such as buying, selling, renting and selling.”

We also found a little detail in the “Consent Form” - although Worldcoin claims that the iris information collected by Orb will delete the image information while generating the World ID to ensure that privacy is not leaked, the relevant data is not only stored locally, but also Transfer to companies in the US or EU for model training. The risk control plan given by Worldcoin is: the relevant data is encrypted in one way to generate digital codes, and pictures will not be directly transmitted.

From a technical point of view, Vitalik said in “What do I think about biometric proof of personality?” in the privacy and security issues involving iris collection:

1. Users’ mobile phones may be hacked, users may be forced to scan their iris when showing public keys, and there is also the possibility of using 3D printing technology to make “dummy” which can be scanned by iris And get other people’s World ID.

2. The iris scan registry could reveal information, at least potentially be used to check World ID possession, and the iris scan could reveal more information as well. Privacy safeguards need to be considered when implementing such technologies to prevent unauthorized access and protect user privacy.

On the bright side, Worldcoin, which aims to become a human identity card in the AI era, has indeed attracted the attention of governments of various countries with this radical increase in usage. Perhaps this is a time to force various regions to discuss a more popular personal coin. The opportunity for data protection standards. At the same time, from the perspective of the circle, Orb opens a new “real” traffic window for the Web3 world.

Conversely, at the practical level, it is not realistic for governments to allow a company to hold global identity data. The technical and moral single-point risks involved are extremely high. Moreover, Orb, as the basis for realizing “universal basic income”, has adopted a unified 25 WLD “iris data purchase price” for different regions in the real world, and will naturally encounter resistance from developed regions that value “data sovereignty”.

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