World Gets Slapped by Adverse Legal Decision in Chile: Teenager Biometric Data Involved

A Chilean court has ordered World to delete the biometric data of a 17-year-old girl after finding that the company violated several constitutional rights by scanning her iris without permission.

The Supreme Court gave World 30 days to delete the data from its databases, according to a Feb. 23 report from local news outlet Emol.

The legal action was taken by Rodrigo Lagos, an attorney whose daughter had her iris scanned and received cryptocurrency for her participation, along with access to the World ID app.

Lagos told local media that minors cannot legally consent to such data collection procedures without their parents’ knowledge.

“A minor cannot give her consent to have her iris scanned, or anything else, not even a fingerprint could be taken, without her parents knowing,” Lagos said. “The company was precisely violating international regulations, not even Chilean regulations.”

The case was initially dismissed by a lower court, which nevertheless deemed the unauthorized collection of biometric data from minors to be illegal and arbitrary.

However, the Supreme Court accepted the case and ordered World to “delete the minor’s World ID, eliminating all records, storage, and processing in the Worldcoin and World App databases.”

The order also mandates that World report the deletion to a lower court within 30 days.

Chile has been one of the countries where World, formerly known as Worldcoin, has faced increasing government scrutiny over its activities.

In November, consumer protection watchdog SERNAC launched an investigation into a possible expansion of World activities to include domiciliary scanning operations, carried out in partnership with Rappi, a delivery platform with over 300,000 registered drivers in Latin America.

Despite the legal challenges, the project appears to have gained some traction in Chile, with reports indicating that sign-ups blew up in 2023, reaching over 1% of the country's population.