Vanity Genetic Testing Is A Slippery Slope Straight To Totalitarian Hell

Here is my possibly unpopular take on this: Anyone who submits his DNA to a third-party for any reason other than by court order enforced by cops holding you down and drawing your blood or swabbing your cheek is a fool. I'm not talking about genetic testing for specific risks like breast cancer and Huntington's Disease; hopefully those data are protected from government search, and are in any event quite specific and may not be of much use to Deputy Dawg poking around looking for evidence.

Genealogical databases are a goldmine for police, but with few rules and little transparency

Orlando police detective Michael Fields was sure he had the break he needed right in front of him to close in on a serial rapist: a list of people whose DNA partially matched the man he hunted.

Then the list disappeared.

After a year of criticism from privacy advocates and genealogy experts, the owner of a popular DNA-sharing website had decided law enforcement had no right to consumer data unless those consumers agreed.

“It was devastating to know that there’s information out there,” Fields said. “It wasn’t fair.”

So he persuaded a judge to grant him access to the entire database, the genetic records of more than 1 million people who never agreed to a police search. It was the first court order in the nation for a blanket consumer DNA search, kept secret from those whose genetic code was involuntarily canvassed.

If you are absolutely fixated on having one of these commercial ventures compare your genes to their databases so you can prove that you are pure Cherokee and run for president, then figure out how to do it anonymously. Or just lie like Elizabeth Warren.

Seriously, there are enough smart people around here who don't trust government and industry. Bat this around for a few hundred comments and construct a method to get your genes compared without it leading back to you so some idiot anti-freedom detective won't knock your door down, shoot your dog, and arrest you for the cold case murder in his precinct.

&topic=world_news"> posted by CBD at 02:15 PM

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