I think the difference is much smaller than you think. If someone finds male DNA and my uncle has used this service, and a public photo with my eyes and hair clearly visible in the background on his Facebook page, then suddenly it’s almost as if I registered my DNA in a public registry. It’s the metadata problem all over again, it just takes one or two more public data points to deanonymize it entirely.
Problem is that it’s easy to correlate dna data against each other and infer who you are (assuming some small number of relatives have also used the service). In fact, a find your relatives service is built in.
There's a big difference between your own DNA being publicly hosted and identified, and some DNA that is pretty similar to yours but not the same as yours being posted and identified to someone that is not you.
Why should you have a right to block the later from happening? It's not your own personal information.
One of the key differences is that in the case of the DNA sequencing services, you're agreeing to ToS that allow them to abuse your data (and thus indirectly the data of any of your blood-relatives), and you directly tie the data to a name and address.
Yeah, this. If an entity really wants to screen your DNA, there are easier routes than figuring out how to deanonymise you from a collection of thousands of profiles with basic demographic info they've just bought or paying enough to convince the entity with the very profitable lawful line in selling anonymised data to break the law for them.
I'd happily put my DNA on public record if it promotes scientific research. I honestly don't understand the privacy concerns here for the lawful citizen.
Given the number of people who voluntarily submit DNA to ancestry and other analysis sites, it really doesn't have much practical impact if governments collect it. Even without yours, they have enough of your relatives' to identify you. I have the same knee-jerk reaction as everyone else to government encroaching on privacy, but in the end we've all long since voluntarily given up any semblance of privacy. We're all carrying tracking devices and filling our homes with microphones and our families have given away our DNA for us. Privacy doesn't exist.
But I have no say over my uncle’s privacy controls. If someone finds my hair, and my uncle allows himself to be publicly searchable by DNA, then the person who found the hair knows it belongs to someone associated with my uncle. They can then find him on Facebook and commence further analysis.
It’s the same problem we saw with Cambridge Analytica. Incidental data shared by our friends can reveal information about ourselves when analyzed in bulk or supplemented with additional data.
Right; but dna reveals more than who you are. It reveals details of your health, abilities and heredity. That can be considered more personal/private than just your name and address.
Personally I regard the issue as moot; dna identification is here and not going away.
> people upload their DNA to for the sole purpose of being findable by their DNA.
It's for the sole purpose of being findable by people with similar DNA to you. Its purpose is not to allow anyone to look you up by your DNA like you are implying here.
The association between your DNA and your name and contact details IS both sensitive and private though. Let's not be disingenuous: the dna companies don't just store dna snapshots. they store it along with a bunch of other data, ant this becomes problematic.
I don't understand your point. It's possible to not want your nude photos public while also being comfortable submitting your DNA to a government database.
I personally probably wouldn't submit my DNA without a particular reason, but I don't see what's the contradiction here?
That’s a fair point. Operating a global database that connects someone’s DNA to their identity brings up different issues than just being able to easily sequence someone’s DNA in a “targeted attack”. I think worrying about keeping your DNA private is a fools errand (See oxford nanopore and extrapolate), but discussing what companies can do with these databases is probably a more fruitful effort.
Yea, that's true - but has little to do with the fact it's a genetic data site. A family tree site with private profiles would have the exact same risk.
The fact that the genetic data isn't involved means this story isn't relevant to people panicking about sharing their genetic data with 23&me.
I think this is somewhat analogous to the privacy issues around Google Street View. Almost nobody thought the image of the front of their house was really private, but the idea of it being catalogued and searchable bothered more than a few. Removing the barrier of someone having to physically do the work to get that information at least made them feel more vulnerable.
Has Street View been a problem for the world in that way? I haven't personally experienced that. That's probably why the DNA database idea doesn't scare me. If you want to live in the world it's essentially impossible to keep your DNA a secret. It seems to me that eventually someone will pick it all up and organize it.
That seems less of an issue about privacy, and more like a case about badly used genetics/statistics. DNA is fallible, at least with the currently used technology, and police have to get that into their heads. It's not the fault of 23andMe or others if police and prosecutors don't understand the implications.
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