NAIROBI, Kenya, Aug 7 – Police raided a warehouse belonging to WorldCoin cryptocurrency in Nairobi and carted away documents over the weekend.
The officers went to the offices along Mombasa Road armed with a search warrant and left with machines they believe stores data gathered by the firm.
The team took the data to the Directorate of Criminal Investigations headquarters for analysis.
Data Commissioner Immaculate Kassait defended her office and said Tools for Humanity, the parent company of Worldcoin, failed to disclose its true intentions during registration.
The government has suspended Worldcoin’s operations in Kenya, citing security concerns paving the way for investigations into the activities of the company.
However, privacy experts worry that sensitive data gathered from scanning a person’s iris might get into the wrong hands.
The Kenyan Capital Markets Authority (CMA) stated it was concerned about the ongoing registration and notified Kenyans that Worldcoin was not regulated in Kenya.
Under Kenyan law, individuals have a right to not have any personal information unnecessarily required or unnecessarily revealed.
Worldcoin, founded by US tech entrepreneur Sam Altman, offers free crypto tokens to people who agree to have their eyeballs scanned.
On Thursday, Worldcoin said it is planning to implement crowd-control measures and collaborate with the government before resuming work.
Worldcoin, founded by US tech entrepreneur Sam Altman, offers free crypto tokens to people who agree to have their eyeballs scanned.
It claims to be creating a new global “identity and financial network”.
Altman, who founded Open AI, which built chat bot ChatGPT, says he hopes the initiative will help confirm if someone is a human or a robot. He also says this could lead to everyone being paid a universal basic income but it is not clear how.
Worldcoin says it chose Kenya as the first African country to launch the platform because of the already booming tech space, and the more than four million Kenyans who are already trading in crypto.
It has also launched in various countries including Indonesia, France Japan, Germany, Spain and the UK. Data watchdogs in some countries have already said they are examining Worldcoin.
Interior Cabinet Secretary Kithure Kindiki suspended the firm’s activities in Kenya to pave the way for a probe into the legality of its operations.
He Thursday appeared before Parliament to among other issues state the precautionary steps taken by the government on the already mined data.
“The aforesaid entity is not registered as a legal entity in Kenya.”
