A young man getting his iris scanned in Nairobi/photo/courtesy.
Interior Cabinet Secretary Kithure Kindiki has said that United States government has been piling pressure on Kenya to allow Worldcoin project to continue operating in the country.
Appearing before MPs, Kindiki said WorldCoin activities were unlawful as it breaches data protection and privacy rights.
According to Kindiki, the government resisted to give in to US pressure and WorldCoin will remain suspended in Kenya.
“United State has been pushing the government on the issues of WorldCoin but we have remained adamant and firm. They think that (WorldCoin) still have a case to set up their activities here. We have remained adamant and the decision we made will remain. We are not going to review the suspension. The status quo remain as is,” Kindiki stated.
On August 2023, Kenyan government banned WorldCoin activities in Kenya citing privacy and data protection breach.
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The ban came as thousand of Kenyan were queuing to get their iris (eyeballs) scanned and awarded Ksh7,000 by World Coin merchants.
It later emerged that a section of Kenyans whose eyeballs were scanned started developing eye problems.
Health Cabinet Secretary Susan Nakhumicha told the National Assembly Committee which was tasked to investigate WorldCoin that they did not report devices used to scan the eyeballs as medical equipment, therefore she didn’t rule of the possibility of the devices to cause health problems.
At the time more than 350,000 Kenyans had their eyeballs scanned.
Given that WorldCoin is not regulated in Kenya, it begged a question on what kind of information the US company was collecting as it emerged that every sign up on would give a digital ID.
With the rise of artificial intelligence and deep fakes, the use of unique identifiers to differentiate human and robot, experts suggests that eyeballs scanning futuristic technology that will help to identify human.
However, WorldCoin operated in Kenya without giving full details of their the data they collect thus getting banned.
