The ban on collecting iris biometric data in Portugal has ended and the company that collected it, Worldcoin, wants to resume activity in the near future, but has decided to wait for approval from the National Protection Commission Data (CNPD).
“At this time there does not appear to be any impediment [para retomar a recolha de dados em Portugal] but we proactively decided not to return to operations until we at least have some ‘feed-back’ from the CNPD on this process, which we haven’t had yet,’ Ricardo Macieira, regional director for Europe, told Lusa. from the company Tools for Humanity, which created the Worldcoin Foundation.
The company says it continues to wait to be received by the CNPD, to talk about the possibility of a reopening and demonstrate its commitment to carrying out a full launch in Portugal in the near future.
Every day, at Gare do Oriente, 300 people take photos of Iris at the Worldcoin stand
Matilde Fieschi
The regional director for Europe clarified that Worldcoin does not buy biometric data from the iris and that what it does is create a “humanity” verification network when accessing digital platforms where a person, anonymously, you can prove that you are a human user and not an automatic access process.
The collection of digital images of the iris in exchange for compensation in cryptocurrencies (a virtual currency used on the internet) began months ago in several countries, but currently in the European Union the only market where maintains Íris data collection in Germany, where Tools for Humanity (TfH) has a local office.
Following the global launch in July 2023, the personal data protection authority in the German state of Bavaria (BayLDA), the lead competent authority responsible for supervising compliance with Worldcoin, has opened an investigation whose results have not yet been published.
In Portugal, the CNPD, following the decision of the Spanish counterpart, decided on March 25 to suspend iris data collection for 90 daysthe deadline has already expired, justifying this decision with complaints about the conditions of data collection, including from minors, deficiencies in the information provided to data subjects and the impossibility of deleting data or revoking consent.
In the order temporarily limiting the collection of biometric data, the president of the CNPD, Paula Meira Lourenço, wrote that it was an indispensable and justified measure to obtain the useful effect of defending the public interest in safeguarding fundamental rights, especially those of minors.
In recent months, Worldcoin has developed privacy and security protection measures to respond to concerns from data protection authoritiessuch as advanced controls for age verification, deletion of old iris codes, and optional World ID non-verification (including the ability to delete iris codes).
The company explained that the purpose of extending the pause in operations is to allow BayLDA time to complete its audit, a process in which Tools for Humanity says it has participated in full for over a year, with the commitment not to carry out operations until BayLDA’s consultation process with other EU data protection authorities is completed.
