#901

Why Everyone’s Talking About This Eyeball Scanner

Who Or What Is Real?

Have you ever had to verify that you were human when logging into a website? We all have. Whether it is matching letters and numbers which have lines or patterns over them or finding all the pictures of bikes, busses, or common things among a block of pictures, they are used to make sure only humans are logged in. I know I’ve had some trouble passing them but I do understand why they are needed. But did you know that such security measures are much older than you think? According one article, way older:

Authentication, the process of confirming the identity of an individual or the integrity of data, has been a fundamental aspect of human interaction since ancient times. From the earliest civilizations to the digital age, humans have constantly developed new ways of verifying that things are how they appear. On the flip side, humans have also constantly created new ways of fooling these systems. In fact, the earliest law against forgery was passed in 80 BCE by the Romans.

That is old. The article mentions signet rings, passwords, and signatures being used to authenticate documents among other things. Would you believe that biometrics was used in one form or fashion going back to the Babylonian Empire? The same article details this for us:

Biometrics may seem like a recent technology due to its increasing use in civil identification and consumer electronics, but it has been used for thousands of years with the earliest accounts dating back to 500 BC in the Babylonian Empire. However, the first record of a full biometric identification system was in France in the 1800s, when Alphonse Bertillon developed a method of specific body measurements for the classification and comparison of criminals. Fingerprinting emerged as a means of identifying criminals and as a signature on contracts in the 1880s. There are debates over who instigated fingerprinting for identification, but Edward Henry is credited with developing the fingerprinting standard called the Henry Classification System.

Using Your Own Body

While using your body is not new, technology is getting very sophisticated and technical these days:

Biometrics grew exponentially as a field of research in the following century, and in the late 1900s, the digital age opened up new opportunities for biometrics. . Speech recognition technology, voice command, iris recognition, and facial detection technology were developed. Hand geometry systems were used at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. By the 2000s, biometric authentication recognition algorithms were patented and implemented commercially, even at large-scale events like the 2001 Super Bowl. Over the past decade, biometric technology has rapidly advanced and become a part of everyday life (just think of how you unlock your phone). As biometrics become more common, the use of identification proxies may cease to exist. When you can use yourself as proof of your own identity, you won’t have to remember passwords, carry keys, or even hold a pen to sign your name.

But we’re living in a time when Artificial Intelligence of AI is upping the ante on security.

Getting Ahead Of AI

In an article from Time Magazine the creator of ChatGPT addresses the current problem of security:

Once again, Sam Altman wants to show you the future. The CEO of OpenAI is standing on a sparse stage in San Francisco, preparing to reveal his next move to an attentive crowd. “We needed some way for identifying, authenticating humans in the age of AGI,” Altman explains, referring to artificial general intelligence. “We wanted a way to make sure that humans stayed special and central.”

And what is that solution? Altman tells us while debuting it recently:

The solution Altman came up with is looming behind him. It’s a white sphere about the size of a beach ball, with a camera at its center. The company that makes it, known as Tools for Humanity, calls this mysterious device the Orb. Stare into the heart of the plastic-and-silicon globe and it will map the unique furrows and ciliary zones of your iris. Seconds later, you’ll receive inviolable proof of your humanity: a 12,800-digit binary number, known as an iris code, sent to an app on your phone. At the same time, a packet of cryptocurrency called Worldcoin, worth approximately $42, will be transferred to your digital wallet—your reward for becoming a “verified human.”

Altman then tells us how this will make actual humans special and central and why:

The project’s goal is to solve a problem partly of Altman’s own making. In the near future, he and other tech leaders say, advanced AIs will be imbued with agency: the ability to not just respond to human prompting, but to take actions independently in the world. This will enable the creation of AI coworkers that can drop into your company and begin solving problems; AI tutors that can adapt their teaching style to students’ preferences; even AI doctors that can diagnose routine cases and handle scheduling or logistics. The arrival of these virtual agents, their venture capitalist backers predict, will turbocharge our productivity and unleash an age of material abundance.

The downside or risk is also addressed:

But AI agents will also have cascading consequences for the human experience online. “As AI systems become harder to distinguish from people, websites may face difficult trade-offs,” says a recent paper by researchers from 25 different universities, nonprofits, and tech companies, including OpenAI. “There is a significant risk that digital institutions will be unprepared for a time when AI-powered agents, including those leveraged by malicious actors, overwhelm other activity online.” On social-media platforms like X and Facebook, bot-driven accounts are amassing billions of views on AI-generated content. In April, the foundation that runs Wikipedia disclosed that AI bots scraping their site were making the encyclopedia too costly to sustainably run. Later the same month, researchers from the University of Zurich found that AI-generated comments on the subreddit /r/ChangeMyView were up to six times more successful than human-written ones at persuading unknowing users to change their minds.

I think you can see the problem.

A World ID

The creators of the Orb are using terms that I find just a tad concerning:

Yet as the Internet becomes overrun with AI, the creators of this strange new piece of hardware are betting that everybody in the world will soon want—or need—to visit an Orb. The biometric code it creates, they predict, will become a new type of digital passport, without which you might be denied passage to the Internet of the future, from dating apps to government services. In a best-case scenario, World ID could be a privacy-preserving way to fortify the Internet against an AI-driven deluge of fake or deceptive content. It could also enable the distribution of universal basic income (UBI)—a policy that Altman has previously touted—as AI automation transforms the global economy.

Yep, the cure could actually be worse than the disease. The price of being secure very well could be the loss of the very privacy it’s designed to protect. Want another scary bit of information? Read on:

Only weeks later, when researching what would happen if I wanted to delete my data, do I discover that Tools for Humanity’s privacy claims rest on what feels like a sleight of hand. The company argues that in modifying your iris code, it has “effectively anonymized” your biometric data. If you ask Tools for Humanity to delete your iris codes, they will delete the one stored on your phone, but not the derivatives. Those, they argue, are no longer your personal data at all. But if I were to return to an Orb after deleting my data, it would still recognize those codes as uniquely mine. Once you look into the Orb, a piece of your identity remains in the system forever.

In return for your identity lasting forever you get the warm, fuzzy feeling of knowing that you are a verified human being. That’s all good and well, but it’s not the verification that should cause you pause. Here is how an article from Prophecy News Watch sounds the real alarm:

The Orb's main purpose is to make scanning people’s irises easier, but at some point, it’s expected to also serve as a point-of-sale terminal meaning you could buy items using just your eyeballs. But let's not sugarcoat this: the infrastructure being built isn't just for verification. It's being designed to eventually link who you are biologically with how you access money, social services, voting rights, and more. And that should give every believer pause.

From Optional To Essential

We’ve seen how our Social Security number went from only being used for savings when you retire to proof of identity for just about everything. The authors of this article make the case for caution with this Orb scanner:

Some may argue, "It's just for convenience," or, "It's voluntary." But technology never stays still. Today's novelty is tomorrow's necessity. And what begins as "optional" often becomes "essential"--especially when tied to the flow of money. Just look at how facial recognition is already used in airports, how palm-scanning has entered Amazon's checkout lines, and how digital IDs are being tested by governments worldwide. Apple's Face ID was the gateway drug. Now the iris is next. What Worldcoin is doing is accelerating the normalization of biometric access as the new currency. And when you combine that with digital wallets, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), and AI-driven identity systems, we are witnessing the slow fusion of the body with the bank. The major concern isn't just privacy--it's control.

By using something that is distinct to your body for access to life’s necessities you actually are controlled by the agencies who provide them for you:

Biometric data is the most intimate form of identification. You can change your password. You can't change your retina. If your eye scan becomes the gateway to your bank account, your passport, or your ability to participate in digital society, then whoever controls that infrastructure controls you.

Important questions to ask then are given to us by the article’s authors:

What happens when you disagree with the system? Or the government? Or the culture? What if "proving you're human" becomes contingent on your beliefs, social behavior, or political views?

We've seen previews of this already: social credit scores in China, PayPal freezing accounts based on speech, bank accounts suspended during protests in Canada. These aren't conspiracy theories--they're warnings. And they echo something we've read before.

Think Bible prophecy.

Making A Mark

It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, 17 so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name. (Rev 13:16-17, NIV)

Using the eyes which are close to your forehead could just be a coincidence, but a system that uses your body is mentioned in end time prophecy and could just be getting us comfortable with the process. The pattern of the veins on the back of our hands are just as unique as a fingerprint or, in this case, our eyes as we’re told in an article from CNN.com. And the Prophecy News Watch article ends by connecting the prophetic dots for us:

Now, to be clear: Worldcoin is not the mark of the beast. But it is a precursor technology--one of many that could easily be adapted or hijacked in the future by a centralized global authority. What Christians must understand is not just the tech--but the trend. This isn't just about scanning your iris for some free crypto. It's about the coming convergence of biometrics, banking, and belief.

I report on this not to say that the Orb is the mark of the beast although it could be in some people’s eyes, rather because it shows we’re moving in that direction and quickly:

…Once a system is built and widely adopted, opting out becomes increasingly difficult. And by the time it's mandatory, it's too late to ask questions. Thus far 12 million verified users are already part of the "world' system. Christians should not fear technology--but we must never blindly accept it. Every new tool should be filtered through both wisdom and Scripture. What is this system building toward? Who controls it? What are the unintended consequences? If your identity, money, and movement become biologically tied to a digital system, the stage is set for Revelation 13 to leap from the page into history. In Matthew 10:16, Jesus told His disciples, "Be wise as serpents and harmless as doves." That calling is more relevant now than ever. We live in a world driven by innovation but starving for discernment. Worldcoin may promise security, fairness, and convenience--but it also brings new chains. Chains that look like shiny orbs. Chains that reward you for surrendering your image.

We’re not to supposed to be fearful or anxious with news like this. We should use it to inspire us to prepare like the Rapture could be just around the corner which means staying pure and witnessing like there’s no tomorrow.