A topic that dominated the news and broadcasts on my country's open TV was certainly iris scanning. Using a device that looked like an orb, Sam Altman's company, creator of the GPT chat, set up exchange points where citizens could scan their irises in exchange for money, well... Not money, but the cryptocurrency worldcoin.

The scanning points I heard about were set up in São Paulo and Florianópolis and ended up creating lines of people wanting to "stick" their eyes in the machine in exchange for money. Interestingly, when asked by the reporter what they were selling the iris for, practically no one knew what the scanning would be used for and what the use of this data would be in the future. Imagine having to put your eyes directly into the camera to access websites, just like there are CAPTCHAs that say "I'm not a robot", because the iris stores much more data about us than our fingerprints. They're doing this because they claim that in the future it will be a security issue, because artificial intelligence can already access websites on the internet, so how can you tell an AI from a human? That's simple, through the iris.

  In the last few days, Argentina arrested five people who were offering money to anyone who agreed to scan their iris. The stop took place in a shopping mall in Santa Fe. The police seized cell phones, money and cars. The case raised concerns about security and privacy, precisely because Worldcoin has a scanning point right there.

  As already mentioned, the idea of the Worldcoin project is to use iris scanning to prove who is human in a world where artificial intelligence is increasingly advanced and in exchange people receive cryptocurrencies. But this idea didn't convince everyone.

  Many governments have already expressed concerns about what can be done with this data. In Brazil, for example, the ANPD (National Data Protection Authority) recently suspended Worldcoin's activities, claiming that the offer of money could pressure people to accept it without fully understanding the risks. What has drawn attention in the case of Argentina is that, according to the investigations, the prisoners may be linked to another project and not to Worldcoin. So the question that remains is, is it worth selling such sensitive data for a little money?