Kenyan police seized documents and machines during the raid after the Kenyan government raised regulatory concerns over the company’s data-collection methods.
Worldcoin’s warehouse in Nairobi was raided by Kenyan police over the weekend. Armed with a search warrant, officials seized key documents and machinery, disclosed by local media KahawaTungu on August 7:
JOINT STATEMENT BY @ODPC_KE and @CA_Kenya ON OPERATIONS OF WORLDCOIN IN KENYA@MoICTKenya pic.twitter.com/oqa01cXffA
— OFFICE OF THE DATA PROTECTION COMMISSIONER (@ODPC_KE) August 2, 2023
The ongoing scrutiny in Kenya is anchored in suspicions that Tools for Humanity, Worldcoin’s parent company, might not have disclosed its full intentions during the registration phase. Part of the issue is that Worldcoin has not been clear on how it plans to store and properly secure the collected biometric data:
“Under Kenyan law, individuals have a right to not have any personal information unnecessarily required or unnecessarily revealed.”
The French National Commission on Informatics and Liberty is also investigating Worldcoin, even collaborating with the Bavarian state authority in Germany on their investigation into Worldcoin:
“The legality of this collection seems questionable, as do the conditions for storing biometric data.”