If 23 and Me goes bankrupt, they will sell all of the biometric data they’ve collected over decades to the highest bidder. Why can’t the US government step in to purchase the company and establish a public trust?
Why would the government care? Lol they don’t care about a genocide or crippling medical care costs why would they decide to have a moral compass now?
Honestly, the law enforcement implications of the government buying the database is just as scary as a 3rd party. Hell I bet a company buys the data and sells access to the FBI, and local law enforcement for a subscription fee.
Law enforcement already can just subpoena/get-a-search-warrant-for them all they want. Why would they bother with paying a fee?
You answered your own question. So they don’t need a warrant. For a fee, they can run ALL DNA collected against just about everyone, no probable cause required.
I don’t even know if that would be legal, but that doesn’t matter. The fee creates a little bit of disconnection so both parties can assume that questions of legality are the others’ responsibility.
This doesn’t make it legal either, it just makes it more likely to happen, and slightly harder to prosecute.
Cuz they print the money and set policing budgets astronomically high. A warrant requires paperwork and a judge (though FISA made that a joke), just buying it outright is far easier.
Agree 100%
How accurate is that data? I have a relative who received different results from their family tree than expected. So they sent it in again. Different results. Annoyed, they sent on yet another test. Again, different results. Not slight either, entire additions and subtractions.
very accurate in my case.
You really need to be careful when taking the samples. No eating, drinking and especially no kissing etc for a couple hours (at least 1h iirc)
They are rife with differences. They have improved over time, but they generally don’t really identify specific ancestry. Rather, they use statistical patterns to correlate self-reported ancestry.
Why should they?
Anyone who used 23 and Me agreed that their genetic code was able to be used my 23 and Me for whatever they want. Why is it now the job of the government to jump in and give those people retroactive protection.
Because those people never agreed to it being used by anyone else. And it’s in the public interest to protect everyone from their highly-sensitive biometric data being misused.
I don’t really want the government tracking our genetic history, either.
Buddy idk how to tell you this…
I’m surprised nobody mentioned the film Gattaca, which is centered around genetic identity.
Gerome Gerome the metronome.
Wouldn’t it be just a lot easier to prevent them from selling it in the first place
possibly not
The government is one of the entities that pays these companies for data. They’re no more trustworthy than a private corporation.
As a practical matter, this is less concerning to me than data breaches like the Equifax one where my social security number and everything else were compromised. I can think of ways 23 And Me data can be misused but, aside from police (who could get the data anyway), most of them are kind of theoretical or contingent on technological developments.
Like, 23 And Me data going to the highest bidder is obviously disturbing but I’m not sure it’s an immediate danger in the same way as all our SSN’s being sold on the dark web. I’d rather nationalize credit reporting agencies than the unprofitable ancestry report company.
Until you go to buy life, health, insurance. You start getting denied loans.
I couldn’t think of any public trust that’s going to benefit to a buy out like this.
To me, it totally makes sense for a private entity/ corpo to handle private data [with consent] from its clients.
I see this as more like the old 23andMe had a private service going on that can’t the public sector doesn’t. It doesn’t make sense for the government the size of USA to prioritize/suddenly adjust policies and provide the same service.
What could be possible is for local governments to step up via public petitions – but even that could be a stretch in terms of cash-in-hand.
Because nobody trusts the public and the public doesn’t trust anybody.
Yet Millions of the same public gave 23nme their genetic data for basically nothing. So maybe trust isn’t the angle.
