Worldcoin Offers ID System to Businesses and Governments

According to a senior manager from the company behind the Worldcoin project, they plan to broaden their operations in order to attract a larger user base worldwide. Additionally, they have intentions to offer their iris-scanning and identity-verification technology to other organizations.

Worldcoin, founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, launched last week and required users to provide their iris scans in exchange for a digital ID and, in some countries, free cryptocurrency, as part of plans to create an “identity and finance network.”

Sign-up sites around the world have had people scan their faces with a shiny spherical ‘ball’, shrugging off concerns from privacy campaigners that biometrics could be misused. According to Worldcoin, 2.2 million have signed up, mostly during the trial period over the past two years. Data controllers in Great Britain, France and Germany have announced that they are investigating the project.

“We’re on this mission to build the biggest economic and identity community we can,” said Ricardo Macieira, European director of San Francisco-Berlin-based Tools For Humanity.

Worldcoin raised $115 million from venture capitalists including Blockchain Capital, a16z crypto, Bain Capital Crypto and Distributed Global in a funding round in May.

Macieira said Worldcoin will continue to operate in Europe, Latin America, Africa and “any part of the world that accepts us.”

Worldcoin’s website mentions a number of possible applications, including separating humans from artificial intelligence, enabling “global democratic processes” and pointing a “potential path” to universal basic income, although these outcomes are not guaranteed.

Most people interviewed by Reuters at sign-up sites in Britain, India and Japan last week said they joined to receive 25 free Worldcoin tokens, which the company said can be redeemed by verified users.

“I don’t think we’re going to create universal basic income. If we can implement the infrastructure that allows governments or other entities to do that, we would be very happy,” Macieira said.

Businesses could pay Worldcoin to use the digital identity system, for example if a coffee shop wants to give everyone one free coffee, Worldcoin’s technology could be used to make sure people don’t ask for more than one coffee without the shop needing to collect personal data. , Macieira said.

“The idea is that as we build this infrastructure and that we allow other third parties to use the technology.”

In the future, the technology behind the iris scanning ball will be open source, Macieira added.

“The idea is that in the future anyone can build their own ball and use it to benefit the community it’s aimed at,” he said.

DETAILS

Regulators and privacy campaigners have raised concerns about Worldcoin’s data collection, including whether users give informed consent and whether a single company should be responsible for data processing.

Worldcoin’s website says the project is “completely private” and that biometric data will either be removed or users can choose to store it in encrypted form.

The data protection supervisory agency of the state of Bavaria, which has jurisdiction in the European Union because Tools For Humanity has an office there, said it had opened an investigation into Worldcoin in November 2022 over concerns about its large-scale processing of sensitive data.

Michael Will, president of the Bavarian regulator, said it was investigating whether Worldcoin’s system was “safe and stable.”

The project “requires very, very ambitious security measures and a lot of explanation and transparency to ensure that privacy requirements are not neglected,” Will said.

Will said that individuals who disclose their information need “complete clarity” about how and why it will be processed.

Rainer Rehak, a researcher on artificial intelligence and society at the Weizenbaum Institute in Berlin, said that the use of Worldcoin’s technology is “irresponsible” and that it is not clear what problems it would solve.

“It’s a big project to create a new consumer base for Web3 and crypto products,” he said. Web3 is the term for the hypothetical next phase of the Internet, based on blockchain, where users’ assets and data are tradable crypto-assets.

The Cayman Islands-based Worldcoin Foundation, which addresses privacy concerns, said in a statement that it complies with all personal data laws and will continue to cooperate with government requests for information about its privacy and data protection practices.