August 7, 2023, Nairobi, Kenya: Over the weekend, police seized documents from a WorldCoin cryptocurrency facility in Nairobi. Worldcoin Police Kenya
The officers, who were armed with a search warrant, entered the headquarters on Mombasa Road and took machines that they thought contained data collected by the company.
The team brought the data to the Directorate of Criminal Investigations’ main office for further analysis. Tools for Humanity, the parent business of Worldcoin, failed to disclose its genuine purpose during registration, according to Immaculate Kassait, the data commissioner, who stood up for her position.
The government of Kenya has banned Worldcoin’s operations, citing security concerns, setting the way for an investigation into the company’s activities. However, privacy experts are concerned that sensitive data obtained by scanning a person’s iris could fall into the wrong hands. Kenya’s Capital Markets Authority (CMA) expressed worry about the ongoing registration and informed Kenyans that Worldcoin was not regulated in Kenya.
Individuals have the right under Kenyan law not to have their personal information needed or divulged needlessly. On Thursday, Worldcoin announced that it would establish crowd-control measures and confer with the government before resuming operations.
Worldcoin, launched by US IT entrepreneur Sam Altman, gives away free crypto tokens in exchange for agreeing to have their eyes scanned. It asserts that it is establishing a new worldwide “identity and financial network.”
Altman, the founder of Open AI, which created the chatbot ChatGPT, says he thinks the initiative will aid in determining if someone is human or a robot. He also claims that this might lead to everyone receiving a universal basic income, but he does not elaborate.
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 cryptocurrency. It has also been launched in Indonesia, France, Japan, Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Some countries’ data watchdogs have previously stated that they are investigating Worldcoin.
Interior Cabinet Secretary Kithure Kindiki suspended the firm’s operations in Kenya to allow for an investigation into the legality of its operations. He testified before Parliament on Thursday, among other things, about the government’s preventive measures regarding already mined data.
“The aforesaid entity is not registered as a legal entity in Kenya.”
said Kithure Kindiki, Interior Cabinet Secrectary
Subscribe to our channel on Telegram here for timely live updates on all happenings in the iGaming space in Africa. You may also join our group on Telegram here and grow your networks by interacting with all players in the iGaming sector in Africa. Worldcoin Police Kenya
