It seems like such a good idea to find out your ancestry:
“A simple test can reveal an estimate of your ethnic mix,” says the announcer in an Ancestry DNA web video. The graphic on the screen shows a percentage breakdown of ethnicities. “Like if you’re Irish or Scandinavian, or both,” the announcer explains.
For the Guernseys, the test was supposed to be fun. But their curiosity twisted to suspicion when they read the fine print. To proceed, they would have to give Ancestry a “perpetual, royalty-free worldwide transferable license” to use their DNA. Guernsey was shocked.
“That entire phrase: ‘perpetual, royalty-free, worldwide, transferable,’ it sounds like they have left it open to do anything they want with it,” Guernsey said.
Larry was concerned that the “transferrable license” could put his family’s DNA in the hands of an insurance company — that could later deny health coverage. “You could get into some really weird science fiction scenarios,” he said…
If that’s the case, why do ancestry and other companies like it require a DNA license to join? Money.
Greely says medical researchers and pharmaceutical companies routinely need DNA data to develop new products. Companies that have big DNA databases, like Ancestry, sell it to them. “Some of them get a fair amount of their revenue by selling the analysis of your DNA,” Greely said…
Ancestry’s website currently tells users they have a choice to later “delete your DNA test results” or “destroy your physical DNA saliva sample.” Ancestry also says it stores users’ “DNA sample without your name.” Those statements are posted to its privacy page. However, they’re not in the contract you sign…
Professor Greely noted that DNA tests for genealogy are fairly cheap right now. Perhaps there’s a reason for that. The low price consumers pay today might be subsidized by the future sale of their DNA data.
I would be surprised if all of this didn’t end up in the government at some point. Already there was a case of police submitting a sample from a crime scene, being told there was a familial match in the database, and then subpoenaing the records to locate a suspect. Normally I would have no problem with that, but given how hostile the upper levels of government view the non-establishment, and the fact we are heading into the kind of chaos which accompanies a collapse, there is no telling what the future might hold.
Could your DNA sample be amped up, added to some blood plasma, and sprayed at a crime scene one day? Could your test results be swapped into a database of outstanding unknown suspects in criminal cases? Anything is possible today.
I will opt out of the database, if you don’t mind.
Spread r/K Theory, because it is less dangerous than spread your genetic sequence
[…] DNA Tests Can Sell Your Data […]
I don’t know how technically feasible your worry is, or how far we are from such a possibility. But if we’re talking those levels of nefarious, I don’t understand why it would be more expensive and less risky to do that then, say, to simply bribe a lab tech – *cough* excuse me – solicit an expert witness to verify that this was definitely your blood at the scene, or heck, just outright fabricate evidence or bribe/threaten people into testifying that they definitely saw you at the scene and/or definitely heard you say how much you wanted to kill that guy / fuck that kid / bomb that building one day.
The state of expert testimony and the scientific literacy of juries is so poor, you don’t really need to do much if you’re in power and you want to frame someone (or, if you’ve affinity for pantsuits, make compelling evidence seem very uncompelling to investigators).
It gets weirder than that. Certain groups create common DNA profiles (due to inbreeding)- but less homogenous groups can also be profiled. With lab mice a researcher knows all of the lines that created any ‘batch’ of mice. Same with dairy cows or dogs from a puppy mill. If you know all the possible DNA in a gene pool- you can identify parts of it. A forensic supercomputer can cross reference Census data (going back to 1790), IRS data, etc. Do you know all of your 3rd, 4th and 5th cousins? A normal individual can have thousands. I guarantee some of them have taken DNA tests. From that obvious mischief can arise. I could ask the supercomputer “Hey identify the most ashkenazi males descended from rabbinic lines” or “identify the smartest Black males” or “identify the tallest Chinese” or “identify Americans most descended from the founders”, all in a selected town/county/state. All to relatively high precision- some of this can already be done just with family surnames. From there, “interests” can guide PI’s to find the DNA of the highest “threat” groups- and the DNA will be found- we humans leave our DNA everywhere.