Is the article: "She swiped her co-worker’s coke. Can police say it cracked a 28-year-old murder case?" or "She swiped her co-worker’s Coke can. Police say it cracked a 28-year-old murder case."
So aside from the other post showing just one of many instances of crime scene investigation (unofficial in that case), this particular story is obviously extremely shady and very unclear what their exact goals are. Otherwise if you really wanted lots of DNA you’d be a “dishwasher” at a restaurant.
Right, I was posing that question rhetorically to make essentially those points. Obtaining DNA in this manner is different than collecting samples left publicly. I also wonder if they’re asking these people for their names, IDs, medical history, classifying or selecting by race, etc information.
So I guess then we might as well just post it online for everyone to see at the click of a button! Someone could also follow you around or put a GPS tracker on your car, so why not just post our GPS data online while we're at it. /s
Genetic data security is a real problem, and making it difficult to obtain this sensitive information has real value.
I for one live in a plastic bag to mitigate any risk that I might leave DNA around to be exploited.
Really, it's not a risk. You won't be able to name a single case of active harm caused by disclosure or sharing of genetic information. The worst thing that is possible is to learn your family isn't what you expected it to be. There have been no other known cases of harm due to genetic disclosure.
This will absolutely change if someone decided that DNA makes for a good way to access your bank account. It is not. It would be no better to key your bank account to an image of your face. Face unlocking phones look to be a good testbed for what might go wrong if security is placed on this kind of footing.
"I for one live in a plastic bag to mitigate any risk that I might leave DNA around to be exploited."
People have doors with locks, and they lock them, even though in most cases it is not too hard to break a window or make a hole in the wall.
"Really, it's not a risk. You won't be able to name a single case of active harm caused by disclosure or sharing of genetic information."
Due to limited resources, medical authorities often have to decide who gets medical treatment. For instance, if someone is an alcoholic and can't quit drinking, giving them a new liver seems like a waste, right? So, genetic information is going to inform medical decisions if it is available. If you have a gene that is thought to predispose you to a recurrence of a problem, then it's logical not to treat it the same way. And the thing that frightens me personally is the idea that this might be done based not on good information but spurious correlations, gut instincts, or popular opinion. Why would you think this is far fetched? Isn't this the way our society already works, never mind possible dystopias?
>You won't be able to name a single case of active harm caused by disclosure or sharing of genetic information. The worst thing that is possible is to learn your family isn't what you expected it to be.
There are many reasons to keep DNA private, it gets much worse than just family surprises. Your DNA is yours for the rest of your life, so even if there are no current threats (which there are to some), there may be threats in the future.
Please watch this video if you are interested in learning more:
But DNA needs to be copied to be analyzed. So we could invent a law that makes each person owner of the copyright to their own DNA. There could be legal penalties for anyone who copies the DNA without permission. Twins will need some special consideration though since they share the same DNA.
It does not need to be copied to be analyzed. You can feed it through a nanopore without any copying, and do an analysis in current flux space without ever instantiating the original sequence. But I am just being semantic. Really, we are all copies of each other, remixed and so forth. If Joe's body makes sperm that includes a haplotype in Sally's genome, is he violating her copyright? We quickly get to an absurd place. We no more own our genome than we own our great grandmother, or she owns us.
