Data Commissioner Immaculate Kassait on Thursday unearthed more mystery into the operations of Worldcoin which is being investigated by the National Assembly Ad Hoc Committee.
According to the Commissioner, Worldcoin operations were undertaken under a different company, Tools for Humanity, which then transferred data collected to Worldcoin contrary to the law.
She indicated that Worldcoin held the data unlawfully as they were not registered as data collectors.
Kassait added that Worldcoin was also not clear on where the data was being stored prompting the government to revoke the licenses.
"The cancellation of the company’s registration is based on the failure to stop data harvesting after orders were issued twice in May, and August by the Data Commissioner.
"The company registered by the Office of the Data Commissioner was Tools for Humanity, yet the data they collected was moved to Worldcoin, which is not registered as a data collector or processor in Kenya," read the statement by the Committee.
However, while appearing before the committee, Worldcoin CEO Alex Blania confirmed that the company outsourced help from Tools for Humanity to carry out its operations in the country.
He explained that the Kenyan company later transitioned to the Worldcoin Foundation which was licensed as a data controller by the government.
Blania maintained that the company sought to promote data privacy and did not monitise data collected from Kenya.
"We do not seek to harvest data and commercialise it, we are building data for privacy by design to create a process that confirms living humans and their uniqueness," he stated.
"It is to one match to identify people easily through the face and the iris, these human features are unique like DNA, and the code developed on the iris identifies only specific individuals."
As per the records 650,000 Kenyans have the Worldcoin app with 194,000 receiving their Worldcoin tokens.
Kenyans were receiving around Ksh7,000 upon completion of registration.
