Cash-Strapped Argentines Queue for Eyeball Scans

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.yahoo.com/tech/cash-strapped-argentines-queue-eyeball-013914106.html

Argentines eyeing a financial boost are lining up by the thousands to have their irises scanned in exchange for a few crypto tokens as part of an online biometrics project under scrutiny in several countries.

Some three million people worldwide have so far provided their iris data to Worldcoin, an initiative of OpenAI chief Sam Altman, but few have embraced the project more fervently than Argentines.

Half-a-million people in the South American nation have participated since Worldcoin launched last July, and queues for scans have grown longer in recent months of fast-shrinking disposable income.

"I did it because I don't have any money, for no other reason," 64-year-old martial arts teacher Juan Sosa told AFP after staring for a few seconds into a silver iris-scanning orb roughly the size of a bowling ball at one of 250 Worldcoin locations across Argentina.

The project seeks to use these iris specs -- unique to each person on Earth -- to develop a digital identification system, a sort of passport that will guarantee the holder is a real human being and not a bot, thus securing online transactions.

Volunteers do not provide any other information such as their name, address or phone number.

The personal iris data is encrypted and, according to Worldcoin, safe. Yet Kenya, Spain and Portugal have ordered it to pause collecting biometric data on their territories pending investigations by numerous countries into possible privacy concerns. Argentina's own Agency for Access to Public Information has said it is verifying Worldcoin's "security measures" with a view to "protecting the privacy of the users." It has yet to make a ruling and has not suspended data collection.

Read more of this story at SoylentNews.