Sam Altman’s Worldcoin project has raised privacy concerns: are they valid?
Marta Sanz, a journalist at Spanish online daily El Español, contacted me to discuss my experience with Worldcoin, Sam Altman’s digital identification system that combines iris biometrics and a cryptocurrency. Her article in Spanish, “Tu iris a cambio de una criptomoneda: el polémico proyecto de Sam Altman que ya opera en España” reflects the concerns of countries like France, Germany or Kenya, which I feel are largely misplaced.
Worldcoin has already prompted panic along the lines that it could be used either for identity theft or to create some sinister, secret database of scanned irises. In practice, the company is building a database of cryptographically protected partial hashes that are only intended to establish proof of personhood i.e. that his or her iris has not been scanned and entered into the system more than once, but in such a way that it is impossible to use it to identify somebody.
Cryptography is not an easy subject to fully understand, but the system created by Worldcoin and published openly for public inspection has all the appearance of having thought all these issues through. Here’s how it works: each Worldcoin user installs an app on their smartphone, which generates a private and a public key. Then, they go in person to visit an Orb. The user stares into the Orb’s…
