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.
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.
