Hacker News Reader

Comment by deweller | Hacker News Reader

Snowden is assuming that Worldcoin is saving hashes of eyeballs. That is not what Worldcoin is doing. Zero Knowledge proofs allow the system to prove that an eyeball exists without actually tying the biometric hash directly to an ID.

From the article: "We use the open-source Semaphore[19] zero-knowledge proof system to transfer the uniqueness of IrisHashes to the uniqueness of user accounts, without linking them."

Now, of course, one needs to trust that Worldcoin is actually doing what they say they are doing, but that is a different discussion.

Edit: I see now that they are saving this data during field testing. But it looks to me that the long term plan is to use ZK crypto to unlink the hash from the account. Snowden's "hot take" ignores this.

https://semaphore.appliedzkp.org/ https://z.cash/technology/zksnarks/

View on HN

That's only true if everything works perfectly and they're also able to solve some unsolved problems. This is why, for the current phase, they're scanning and storing people's bodies, faces, eyes, and other metadata.

See this page: https://worldcoin.org/privacy-during-field-testing

We collect the following data through the Orb after the user gives us their consent: Images of users’ body, face, and eyes, including users’ irises (visible, near infrared and far infrared spectrum) Three-dimensional mapping of users’ body and face

If their system were hacked or misused by authoritarian governments, the damage would be huge. And they're basically telling the world "trust us, we'll figure it out" without proving they can do it.

This is a privacy nightmare.

Huh? They’re collecting and saving them, at least up to the point of confirming all new user accounts which happens sometime after they scan irises. I might have missed it but I don’t see anywhere in their docs where it says they discard the hashes even after they’ve minted a unique user account for the new user. They need to store the hashes at least until they’ve registered all possible users - how else will they confirm that a new user hasn’t previously registered.

All iris hashes are publicly saved, but not linked to wallets. Details here: https://worldcoin.org/how-it-works#crypto (Account Privacy section)

I think it's the idea of collecting them in the first place that most people are uncomfortable with. It's still a lot of trust to put in the hands of a private company. It reminds of the whole brouhaha with Apple and their CSAM privacy measures.

I normally would align with Snowden, but Worldcoin using ZK-proofs is an important discussion to have. It is going to take a while for the world to understand the benefits that zero knowledge proofs offer in terms of privacy, but they are starting to be found everywhere, and privacy advocates (of which I consider myself one) need to understand what they offer to the consumer in exchange for some real benefits that we cannot get through public policy, etc.

Zk proofs have nothing to do with Snowden’s criticism. They’re collecting and storing iris hashes regardless of whether they’re using Zk proofs downstream in their tech stack.

Why is this problematic?

The risks as I see it are authoritarian governments figuring out the tech and using it. Or compelling Worldcoin to do their bidding.

Storing hashes in itself doesn't seem like it can be abused. Suppose Worldcoin has a database of a billion hashes, then an authoritarian government decides to compel Worldcoin for some nefarious purposes. What then? What bad stuff could happen?

"What then? What bad stuff could happen?" I leave that to your imagination. It comes down to individual preference and where you draw the line at privacy. I personally wouldn't trust my biometric data to any FAANG let alone some shit-coin startup that could potentially decide to monetize that data any which way at some point in the future.

That's farfetched. How would they monetize eye scans? 23andme and Facebook have clear commercial use cases for the data they collect. What's the commercial use case for collecting mere eye scan data? At best the data set is worth a few million dollars and that's not a conspiracy worth running, especially when they can make billions off the actual crypto.

> one needs to trust that Worldcoin is actually doing what they say they are doing

Right, and that's a big part of the problem.

With all of the data abuse that the industry has already engaged in, it's silly to trust any company just because they say "trust us". Worldcoin has given no reason to trust them.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com