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The Audiencia Nacional (National Hearing), a Spanish special tribunal, has maintained the measures that the AEPD, the private data watchdog in the country, has taken against Worldcoin. The court determined that the defense of the general interest of protecting the people’s data must prevail over the company’s economic interest.
Spanish Audiencia Maintains Suspension of Worldcoin Activities
Worldcoin, the biometric identification project, faces increased opposition for its activities in Spain. The Spanish Audiencia Nacional (National Hearing) has maintained the measures taken by the AEPD, the personal data watchdog, on the project’s operations, ratifying the order to stop collecting personal data and scanning the irises of Spanish citizens.
In a decision taken last week, the tribunal stated that the measures taken by the AEPD were justified, given that Worldcoin’s biometric data processing affects numerous citizens, and the consent of citizens for this processing task is “unclear.”
The decision comes after Worldcoin introduced a complaint to toss a measure that banned its activities in Spain for up to three months, substantiated by several reports that included reading biometric data from minors and worries about the inability to withdraw the consent to distribute this biometric data.
Justifying its resolution, the tribunal stated that “safeguarding the general interest which consists of the protection of the right to protection of personal data of the interested parties” must prevail “against the particular interest of the appellant company of fundamentally economic content.”
However, the decision does not touch on the issues that Worldcoin raised when it stated that the AEPD had overreached, given that the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) states that these measures can only be taken by the data regulators in the jurisdiction of each company. The tribunal declared that the AEPD was “competent to adopt said measure without prejudice to what is agreed when the merits of the matter are resolved.”
Worldcoin’s woes in Spain add to the ones it faces in other countries. On March 3, the South Korean Personal Information Protection Commission announced an investigation into the company’s data collection practices.
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